Miami Beach to Dedicate One of Its Streets to Cuban Singer Gloria Estefan

August 18, 2024

The Florida city of Miami Beach will honor popular Cuban-American singer Gloria Estefan by naming a street after her, after the city commission unanimously approved that 13th Street be renamed Estefan Way.

In September 2023, Miami Beach's Commission on Women highlighted Estefan's outstanding contribution to South Florida and proposed the street name change for the street located between the well-known Ocean Drive and Meridian Avenue.

City officials unanimously accepted the recommendation of the Public Safety and Quality of Life Committee to name 13th Street as Gloria Estefan Way.

The 66-year-old singer and actress, a Grammy Award winner for her album Mi tierra (1994), has been a long-time resident of Miami Beach.

Estefan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in November 2015 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States.

The commission also approved the committee's recommendation to jointly name 12th Street, between Ocean Drive and Washington Avenue, as Naomi Wilzig Way.

"Everyone knows who Gloria Estefan is, and it's an honor to put her name on the street, but not everyone knows who Naomi Wilzig is," said commissioner Kristen Rosen González, who recalled that Wilzig (1934-2015) was the founder of the World Erotic Art Museum (WEAM) in Miami Beach, the second largest of its kind.

For nearly two decades, Wilzig devoted herself to collecting erotic artworks from different parts of the world until she created a collection of more than 4,000 erotic objects.

"The reason we are doing this is because when we looked at the city of Miami Beach there was only one street named after a woman (the one dedicated to Barbara Capitman, a pioneer in the restoration of the Art Deco district)," noted Rosen González, something that, she said, was "unacceptable because we are 50% of the population."

"We have to set an example that not only prominent men built this city, but women did too. We are simply trying to level the playing field," highlighted the commissioner, according to recent reporting by the weekly business newspaper Miami Today.

The commission also approved an amendment to the city code to allow the joint naming of streets in honor of outstanding women. According to local media, the measure still awaits approval by the Miami-Dade County commission to make the joint naming effective.