Historic home moved from downtown West Palm Beach up for sale for $2.52 million
The home at 1000 Belmont Place was the epitome of style and class during the 1920s Florida land boom ― a Mediterranean Revival beauty designed by a confrère of none other than Addison Mizner himself.
It was featured in hand-sketched advertisements for West Palm Beach’s new Hillcrest community and lauded for its open second-floor loggia and barrel tile roof.
But that was a century ago. Belmont Place is gone, so is Hillcrest.
The house, however, has endured, and is being restored to a single-family home after decades of uncertainty.
Called the Riddle House for its original owner, West Palm Beach’s first city manager Karl Riddle, it’s been moved twice since its 1925 construction, first to downtown after the Hillcrest neighborhood was razed because of airport noise, and now to a more permanent address in the Sunshine Park Historic District.
Work is already underway at its new address at 432 Ardmore Road, and the home is expected to go on the market this month for $2.52 million.
“There is still pecky cypress, all wood floors and a dramatic staircase to the second floor,” said Joseph Molina, who owns the land where the home was moved and is now in partnership with developers to restore and sell it. “It’s a worthwhile exercise to save a piece of property that has historical value and put it in a historic community.”
The West Palm Beach Historic Preservation Board approved designating the 3,000-square-foot home as a historic property on Tuesday, awarding it protections against demolition and noting its significance to the city. In addition to being nearly 100 years old, it was also designed by Lester Geisler, who worked with Mizner, the renowned Palm Beach society architect.
Riddle served as West Palm Beach city manager between 1920 and 1923 when he was recalled in a decision he blamed on “the reaction that always follows real progress” in an April 1923 Palm Beach Post story.
It was progress ― the growth of Palm Beach International Airport ― that forced the Riddle House out of the Hillcrest community in the early 1990s. The city agreed to move the Riddle House and another home, called the Locust House, to downtown where they sat for years near the corner of Quadrille Boulevard and Fern Street.
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The Locust House fell into disrepair, but the Riddle House was used and maintained by the city’s health clinic and the Horticulture Society of South Florida.
The home that now sits on Ardmore Road is different from the Riddle House that was moved in 1995 to Yesteryear Village at the South Florida Fairgrounds. The fairgrounds house is one Karl Riddle lived in when he first took office in 1920. It also served as the home for the groundskeeper of Woodlawn Cemetery.
When developers bought the land downtown where the homes were located, the city inked a deal that required the company to buy, move and restore the two houses. The 1,300-square-foot Locust House was moved to the corner of Sapodilla Avenue and Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. It has been fully restored and sold in July for a recorded $465,000.
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It was a bigger hurdle to find a lot for the Riddle House, said developer Kent Wilmering, a partner in the group that bought the downtown land and is responsible for redoing the homes. He said as a commercial developer he’d never undertaken a historic restoration project before.
“There are so many different moving parts,” Wilmering said. “It’s been a fascinating challenge.”
West Palm Beach-based architectural firm David Miller & Associates is working on the home with interior designer Margaret Kaywell of Kaywell Interiors.
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Jessica Julian, a Realtor with Douglas Elliman Palm Beach who is listing the Riddle House, said the home had undergone some preservation efforts in the past so that it still has original elements such as pecky cypress ceilings, six-panel colonial doors and two fireplaces. The second floor loggia has since been enclosed.
The current update will include new electrical wiring, new plumbing, storm impact windows and double insulation. The lot is next to the FEC Railroad tracks, which have quiet zones in that area so that engineers don’t sound horns at crossings.
“It’s going to be like a brand-new house but with all the charm of a historic home,” Julian said. “There are a lot of people who like the look of historic homes and aren’t into the huge new blocky houses.”
The restoration is scheduled to be completed this spring.
Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: West Palm Beach historic home moved twice now for sale at $2.52 million
