Say "the Castaways" and longtime Miamians might raise their eyebrows, widen their eyes, smile or even smirk. Built by Joe Hart, founder of the Pickin' Chicken restaurant chain, the Castaways was a two-part resort complex in man-made Sunny Isles. A three-story, ocean-side motel designed in a vaguely pan-Polynesian style by architect M. Tony Sherman came first, in the early 1950s at Collins Avenue and 163rd Street. By 1957, Charles F. McKirahan upped the Asian ante when he designed a 132-room addition directly across the street on Fairyland Island.

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With peaked roofs and fretwork balcony railings and balustrades, the buildings have been described as Oriental Modern, Neo-Chinese Polynesian Pastiche, and Far Eastern Kitsch with Polynesian Trimmings. One Miami Herald writer recalled the Castaways squatting on its site "like a fat Chinese toad."