The mid-day heat is sweltering as I arrive at the office and shop of Miami Awning Co. in late October.

The fenced-in parking area is packed with employees' cars and pickup trucks.

Dust has settled over everything.

A security buzzer to the left of the entrance reminds me that this is what Mike Reilly, president of the company, calls "not the nicest of neighborhoods." The place is a nondescript building crowding the corner of an intersection in the light industry district in west central Miami.

After a while, someone comes to let me in with apologies. "Sorry for the wait.

"We've got a major job that has everyone tied up at the moment." For the rest of my visit, the pace of activity around the shop never flags until quitting time late in the afternoon.

From all appearances, that's the normal business code around Miami awning, a family-run enterprise that can trace its beginnings to the early 20th century, managing to survive and thrive through the Great Depression and several dozen recessions.

The Miami Awning Co. has a history of quality craftsmanship and has arrived at the door of the 21st century under the leadership of a fourth generation of Reillys.

Their business started in 1929 as the Miami Beach Awning Co., with several clients from the wealthy arrivistes from the north who settled in Miami Beach in the 1920s.

Among their early clients was notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone. The company¥s work order book from the 1920s and 30s is currently displayed in a glass case in the front office, open to the Capone listing-- an order for a complete set of awnings for Capone¥s mansion on Palm Island in Biscayne Bay.

In more recent times, clients have included such luminaries as former Miami Dolphins¥ quarterback Dan Marino, NFL Hall of Famer coach Don Shula, Florida Senator Bob Graham, Latin recording artist Julio Eglesius, and two brothers from the rock group The BeeGees. "All of them were very nice people to work with, says Joanne.

But the family history in awnings extends back even further than 1929. The Reilly¥s great-grandmother, Elizabeth A. Reilly, who began in Chicago as a landlord of several rental properties, became wealthy enough to purchase some property in the Miami Beach area and moved with new husband, Raymond LaPointe, to Florida in 1919.

Shortly after their arrival in the south, they began the Biscayne Awning Co. in Miami Beach. Biscayne Awning Co. was an early member and supporter of IFAI¥s predecessor, the National Tent & Canvas Manufacturers Association.

Their timing couldn¥t have been better. Miami Beach development was at its height in the 1920s, and many of the wealthy new home owners needed awnings to cope with the bright Florida sun.

Despite a major hurricane in September 1926 that devastated many a residence and hotel, as well as a number of businesses (damage was estimated at in 1926 dollars), there was enough work to keep the company busy through that period.

In fact, it needed to expand operations. In the iconic year of 1929, the LaPointes parted ways and Elizabeth¥s son Bert J. Reilly purchased the Miami Beach Awning Co. Bert Reilly became its president and the company grew steadily though the 1930's, 40's, and 50's.

Bob Reilly, Burt's son, initially studied chemical engineering and worked for DuPont, but joined the family business in the mid-1950s when business was booming. He assumed the presidency in 1957 upon his father's retirement.

The company moved from Miami Beach to west-central Miami in 1968 in order to expand its operations. The name changed at the same time. Joanne joined the business right out of high school in 1973, helping out in many areas ("I've never worked anywhere else!"), and Mike joined in 1977, becoming president when Bob retired in the early 1990s.

Bill Garvey's involvement began in the mid-80s when his own business installing neon signs brought him in regular contact with Miami Awning. Garvey's training as an journeyman electrician and experience as a sign installer have contributed much to Miami Awning's expertise on many commercial projects over the years. Through their individual lives and connection to the industry, the Reilly family has had its feet in three centuries of American industry.

Looking for a challenge
Miami Awning has consistently won awards for high-quality workmanship and artistry from IFAI's annual achievement awards program, almost from the program's beginning in 1947.

In 1952, they won the coveted Grand Prize, the "Stuart Trophy," for the most distinctive canvas awning in the United States and Canada, after winning top honors three times over a six-year period. The company was part of a handful of competitive awning firms in southern Florida after the second World War who led the nation in adapting their product to the demands of Modernis architecture, a style that flourished in America after the war.

The company has never shied from working with leading-edge architects and challenging designs. They've worked with the likes of Philippe Starck (France's bad-boy architect and internationally awarded product designer), and Florida architects and "New Urbanists" Andreas Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, along with many regional architects of repute.

"Working with Miami Awning was like going to a dressmaker's shop," says Miami architect Bobby Altman. "The are very creative people who are able to get the right hardware to make [the project] happen."

Indeed, challenging projects are welcomed. "We're known in Miami as the place to go if you have something difficult to build," says Mike.

For example, a 1992 project for Miami's Rouse BaySide Marketplace involved a series of stepped double canopies to cover a set of escalators leading down to an open-air courtyard. The structure for supporting the canopies was quite complex but the results appear effortlessly simple.

The project won the company an Outstanding Achievement Award for commercial canopies in IFAI's 1992 International Achievement Awards. Other award-winning work includes numerous residential carports, a Miami Awning specialty.

"We've had the nerve to jump into some pretty big projects over the years and that's helped us, I believe," says Joanne. "The first BaySide (contract) in '87 was a very big project.

We were contacted in February and has to make and have in place 200 awnings by April 4 of that year. We (regularly) had shifts working until midnight, and the order included custom stripes to boot."

Never ones to shy away from the unusual, Joanne says the company has produced smoking sheds and walkway canopies for medical centers, work stations for light industry and maintenance shelters for car dealerships. They'd like to get more playgrounds and other community-oriented projects as well.

Projects and professionalism
My walk through the facilities in October revealed an important side to the company's success: a skilled, experienced staff. Despite a general frenzied atmosphere around the place, the sales office was strangely empty--they were all out working with or getting new clients. "As a good sales staff should be," says Joanne.

Down the hall from the sales room is the company's CAD drafting department (at least two people run the computers constantly, one of them a trained architect), and across the hall, a specialist works full time on getting permits from city building departments or historical design review boards.

Miami's historic district has very rigid guidelines and getting approval for anything out of the ordinary takes enormous energy and patience. Occupancy permits can sometimes take up to two years to get. That's where Miami Awnings permit expert gives them an edge over the competition.

Miami¥s dynamic vacation industry provides Miami Awnings with opportunities to create a variety of awning types. With a recent building boom in the Art Deco district on the famous South Beach strip of Miami Beach, many new hotels have demanded unique features to help make their resorts stand out.

Miami Awnings has provided canopies or awnings for many of these new hotels. "We've done most of the hotels in Miami," says Joanne. Clients have included Loew's Miami Beach Convention Center Hotel, the Delano (interiors by Philippe Starck), the Biltmore and the Edison hotels.

They have many retail and restaurant clients in the same district including Bal Harbor Shops, Smith & Wolensky, Joe's Stone Crab Restaurant, and numerous projects along the coast, in the Bahamas and the West Indies.

Projects range the full spectrum of awning and canopy types with commercial clients making up to 60 percent of the annual workload. Residential work accounts for 35 percent and approximately five percent are industrial or medical clients.

A good chunk of the commercial work has been in the resort islands off the coast of Florida. The company website lists work in more than 10 islands, including Grand Cayman, Nassau, St. Marten, Dominca, and the Turks and Caicos islands.

Miami Awning's success can also be attributed to staff dedication, as well as experience. Although the number of employees floats between 40 to 45, depending on workload and the size of the projects in house, employees are quite loyal and have worked for the company an average of 10 to 15 years.

"Everyone in the business has problems with personnel," says Mike Reilly. "Thankfully, we got that under control. The real challenge is finding younger people who are attracted to the industry, and to train them and integrate them into the business."

Despite the fact that Miami Awning enjoys making lots of good awnings, they keep looking to break out of routine and to try and develop something new and distinctly different. And they claim to be on the brink of introducing something quite innovative.

"If you don't change to meet the times," says Mike, "you don't last long in the business." For Miami Awning, around for more than 70 years, that is almost an understatement.

This article originally appeared in the March 2001 issue of Industrial Fabric Product Review