Question: Where in Florida is America’s only city hall with minarets that took architectural cues from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves?
Answer: Opa-Locka City Hall
Opa-Locka was built during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, when films like Rudolf Valentino’s fantasy The Sheik and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad had harnessed the sultry appeal of the Middle East into a full-blown cultural fad. When developer Glenn Curtiss built Opa-Locka, he adopted a One Thousand and One Nights theme, with the streets given names such as Ali Baba Avenue.
