Miami Vice Locations You Can Still See Today

It's Miami Vice Week in Miami. The city is celebrating 41 years of a show that, depending on who you ask, gave Miami a terrible — or badass — reputation throughout the 1980s. To celebrate, cast members Edward James Olmos, Olivia Brown, Saundra Santiago, John Diehl, Bill Smitrovich, Penelope Ann Miller, and Tony Plana will be in town for a meet-and-greet this week; a temporary museum will showcase artifacts from the series; and an '80s Car & Fashion Show will take over Ocean Drive.

But if you live in Miami, you don't need a designated week to go down a neon nostalgia rabbit hole. Many of the sets featured on the show are easily accessible year-round. Most Miami Vice location lists tend to focus on well-known Ocean Drive spots, but nearly 1,000 locations were filmed during the show's 114-episode run from 1984 to 1989. We've compiled a list of ten locations, with attention paid to key episodes, architectural styles or periods, accessibility, and recognizability.

Here are 10 Miami Vice shooting locations you can still see throughout South Florida.

Aventura

20251 NE 25th Ave., Aventura

Detective Gina Calabrese, played by Saundra Santiago, used this 7,708-square-foot architectural treasure as her cover house in the Season 5 episode, "Fruit Of The Poison Tree." After her cover gets blown, the bad guys place a bomb concealed as a gift on her doorstep, killing an innocent teenage boy instead.

An impressive explosion was filmed on location, scorching the entrance of the building and snapping off some branches from the shrubbery out front. Still, the residence, which is blurred out on Google Maps but still visible on Zillow, looks just about the same today as it did in the 1989 episode.

Coconut Grove

3067 Jefferson St., Coconut Grove

This modern Coconut Grove villa, designed and built by Peter Blitstein in 1982, was one of the first of its kind in Miami. It was extensively used as the interior and exterior of Brenda's (Crockett's architect girlfriend) home in Season 1's "Nobody Lives Forever." It's also the house where Crockett finally caught the freaky night crawler in Season 3's Halloween episode, "Shadow in the Dark."

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea

Plunge Beach Hotel
4660 El Mar Dr., Lauderdale-by-the-Sea

This Lauderdale-by-the-Sea hotel, about 35 miles north of downtown Miami, was the setting of a significant scene in the pilot, when a hitman disguised as a woman (played by Martin Ferrero, who later guest-starred as Izzy Moreno) killed whistleblower Leon Jefferson on the hotel's beach bar porch. It was a Howard Johnson's when the pilot was filmed in 1984.

Little Havana

1240 W. Flagler St., Miami

One of Miami Vice's most intense moments, a six-minute conversation between Crockett and Tubbs in Season 1's "Evan," was filmed at this Art Deco gas station in Little Havana on March 12, 1985. The night scene features brilliant lighting and colors — signatures of series creator Michael Mann — and brings to mind Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. Today, there are no more gas pumps, and the tire shop that once occupied the building is also gone. At press time, the building is being painted all white — similar to the set seen on the show, but without the pink lighting.

Jose Marti Park
351 SW Fourth Ave., Miami
Right below I-95 on the banks of the Miami River, this small, inconspicuous park has a rich history as a camp for thousands of Cuban refugees after the Mariel boatlift. The park was built in its place after the camp was decommissioned in 1984, the same year Miami Vice went on air.

Jose Marti Park is a popular set in the series. You'll spot it when Crockett meets with Barbara Carrow in "One Eyed Jack," when he talks Rita Amato out of hiring a hitman to kill her abusive husband (played by Bruce Willis) in "No Exit," when Tubbs takes Valerie for a walk in "Rites of Passage," and when he chases Montana Stone in "Badge of Dishonor."

Miami Beach

Española Way

Conceived by architect Robert Taylor and developers N.B.T. Roney and William Whitman, Española Way, originally named the Spanish Village, was built in the early 1920s to resemble a Mediterranean village. It provided the backdrop for half a dozen episodes throughout all seasons of Miami Vice, including the pilot and the finale.

Palmetto Bay

Deering Estate
16701 SW 72nd Ave., Miami

This sprawling estate was owned by namesake businessman Charles Deering until his death in 1927. It comprises a three-story wooden house (Richmond Cottage), a three-story stone building, and auxiliary buildings within a tropical hardwood hammock garden. The State of Florida acquired the property in 1985, the year after Miami Vice's debut, and opened it to the public. It's seen in numerous episodes, including Season 2's "Bushido," Season 3's "The Afternoon Plane" and "Cuba Libre," and in the series finale, "Freefall," as the palace of a South American dictator´s fictitious country.

Pinecrest

7777 SW 127th St., Pinecrest

This compound was discovered by Miami Vice location scouts almost immediately after Miami architect Roney Mateu built it for himself and his family in 1987. It was used for interior and exterior shots in Season 4's "Love at First Sight," a wild episode which involves a pre-internet dating service, sex workers, and the first-ever TV appearance of a sex toy.

South Miami

Dragonfly Boutique
5815 SW 68th St., South Miami

This early-80s tropical Bauhaus-style building was once the head office of Altman Architects and Dennis Jenkins and Associates. It was a consulate building in the aforementioned "Rites of Passage" and in Season 4's "A Rock and a Hard Place" as a National Enquirer newsroom. As of last year, the building is home to thrift shop Dragonfly Boutique. Its '80s pastel color palette is gone and replaced with bright reds and yellows.

Upper Eastside

4400 NE Second Ave., Miami

This apartment complex on the lower end of the MiMo District around Biscayne Boulevard was used as the exterior home of freaked-out ex-Vice-cop Hank Weldon in Season 2's seminal "Out Where the Buses Don't Run." The episode is a fan favorite and was featured in TV Guide's 1997 list of the "100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time." While the exterior was used in the show, the interior scenes were filmed on a set in North Miami's defunct Greenwich Studios.