HomeMy WebLinkAbout1964-03-21 NPB Land of Ross (Palm Beach Post)Amor
Birt's Eye
a1m Beach
and Of Ross
BY GEOFFREY BIRT
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NORTH -PALM BEACH
This is a city which aid not
exist eight years ago. It was developed from raw coastal land
.41
by a Vanderbilt, Tenn., graduate who majored In chemistry,
H. A. (Bob) Ross,
and his brother DickN.
If you are a Scot, you can call is the land of Ross.
Or, county Ross on the Gold Coast. �1 1
Eight years ago, the Palm Beach County Home Builders'
PP Association was chartered. Bob Rose was its first president.
That was the year
1956 and the year of the county s first
Parade of Homes which was staged in North Pahn Beach. 1
As we have said, North Palm Beach did not exist in 1956. 'Z
The 17 home models in that year's Parade, on Anchorage Drive, rir
just inside the main entrance to the Village — as it is called
— were its only homes.
The parking lot for the parade was the site `of the present
elementary school. The Ross brothers donated the school site —0
— it would be well if other developers copied this generosity!
Sir Harry's Murder
This year's Parade of Homes, which opens April 4, will
again be partly in North Palm Beach, on Ross -developed land,
and partly in nearby Cabana Colony East, on land in which
the Ross Construction Company has a stake together with
investors from Palm Beach and Miami.
Bob Ross holds a committee chairmanship in this year's
promotion. Builders Henry D. Bogatin — this year's state
president of the Florida Home Builders' Association — Robert
C. Brown, C. W. Kendall, and Joseph N. Smelcer who all
had homes in the original 17 unit 1956
Parade of Homes,
again have models in this year's Parade.
The wheel of history which turns fast in Florida, has,
therefore, made a complete turn — so back to the beginning
and some facts about the land of Ross.
Originally, the area we call today North Palm Beach, was
part of the estate of Sir Harry Oakes — the chap who gained
immortality in the annals of British history by being the corpus
delicti in a very socialite unsolved murder 'neath a Nassau
fitfully moonlit night, some 20 years ago. (Sir Harry's Palm
Church home almost adjoined Bethesda -by -the -Sea Episcopal
MacArthur From Chicago
Subsequently there arose, from Chicago, John D. MacArthur
who acquired many of the late Sir Harry's acres in this neck
of the former palmetto scrub palm lands.
In Sept. 1955 the Ross brothers paid MacArthur $3,700,000
for 1,350 acres of the raw land. They brought in equipment,
and pushed and pulled and dug and dredged, drained and
installed roads and utilities, till the land was ready for North
Palm Beach — and the first Parade of Homes.
Since the initial October 1956 Parade of 17 homes through
February this year — seven years and four months —
building permits show there has been $37,142,856 worth of
building construction in the Village. Total number of homes
completed in that 88 month period is 1,523.
Bob Ross is 46, married with five children. There's nothing
of the promoter or huckster about this chemist from Vandy.
tit He smokes a pipe and is quiet almost to the point of aloofness.
In the war he was in the Navy as captain of a minesweeper
— and no one can live much more dangerously than that!
Take High Or Low Road
His brother, Dick, was always a career man in construction
• and during the war Uncle Sam kept him on the job (he had
also studied architecture at Pratt Institute, N. Y.) . Among his
war time duties — helping build airfields in Georgia. He is
married and has two children.
At war's end, the two brothers teamed and came to
Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale, where they met sales knowl-
edgable Jack Schwenke, realtor, and the trio have stayed
together.
They all came to the West Palm Beach area in 1950 and
built some 2,500 homes in those fast - paced post-waryears. At
P p�
the decade moved towards the sixties, Pratt & Whitney
vegan iitruti1g !owe, su iu ,a.+: : " the Bee Line
�AtI.LY !l.Nil� W v.a
Highway. The Ross brohers bought the some 12 square smile
area from MacArthur.
Visitors to this year's exhibition of 22 builders in a dual
Parade of Homes therefore, can either take the high road to
the partly owned land of Ross, or the low road to their wholly
owned North Palm Beach site at Yacht Club Point on the bonnie
banks of Lake Worth.
-t