HomeMy WebLinkAbout1983-07-29 Once-grand Winter Club to be razed (Miami Herald)Aec /9(4j1
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Wine'` -toChi e razed
N. palm Beach panel
solves decade debate
By JOEL ACHES BA CH
Herald Staff Writer
Ripped by hurricanes, trampled
by millionaires, shadowed by an un-
solved murder and abandoned to
the mouths of termites, the once -
grand Winter Club of North Palm.
Beach will now suffer the wreck-
er's ball, the Village Council decid-
ed Thursday night.
With council member Al Moore
vigorously dissenting, the council
voted 4-1 to seek bids immediately
to tear down the club. Standing at
the U.S. 1 entrance to the North
Palm Beach County Club, it is the
oldest and most controversial build-
ing in the upper middle-class village
of 11,300.
About 50 residents turned out for
the meeting.
"I don't think it's fair," said resi-
dent Mary Chilst:roim, angry that
the council did not conduct a refer-
endum. "I think we need something
that's a different -type structure
than a concrete condominium."
"It sits there as a potential haz-
ard," council member Craig Mundt
said. "We would definitely have to
add to the tax base to redo this
building."
Moore, alone against his col-
leagues, said the building is historic
and beautiful. "The beauty of it
could never be returned to this
area."
The vote answered a decade of
questions about the future of the
seedy colossus, built 57 years ago
when North Palm Beach was just
pasture and mangroves on the edge
of Lake Worth. It has passed
through many hands, some of them
unloving. In 1961, it was purchased
by the village, used for many year'
as an arts and recreation center and
condemned six years ago because of
gradual deterioration.
In an area where history is
sparse, local preservationists say
that the Mediterranean -style club is
elegant and charming, a vital link to
the past.
"It still is the only thing in the
northern end of this county ... that
C.J. WALKER / Miami Herald Staff
Once -grand Winter Club to be torn down.
Council votes to raze
historic Winter Club
CLUB / From 1 A
you can tell what it used to look
like in Florida," Moore said.
Those who favor demolition say
the Winter Club is ugly and danger-
ous.
"It's outlived it's usefulness,"
said Jim Frevert, a resident of 22
years.
Vice Mayor V.A. Marks said it
would cost too much to save the
structure, adding that "anything
short of completely doing that
building over would be wrong for
this village."
No other topic in recent years has
so engrossed and incensed the citi-
zenry of the village. Debate came to
a head in 1979, when village offi-
cials held a public referendum to let
the people decide whether to save
the club or tear it down.
They voted 1,103 to 1,103.
In 1981, the council spent
$47,000 to put a new roof on the
building, but was disappointed to
discover that a listing on the Na-
tional Historic Register brought in
no state or federal funds for renova-
tion.
The village would need $370,000
to $2 million to renovate the build-
ing, according to various estimates.
When the club is destroyed, a
strange bit of history will come to
an end. Developer Harry Kelsey
built the club in 1926 to cater to a
new hotel constructed nearby by
Palm Beach millionaire Paris Sing-
er. Within two years, however, Kel-
sey had squandered his money and
gone bankrupt. A hurricane tore off
the club's roof.
Then Harry Oakes, later Sir
Harry Oakes, bought the building
and made it notorious as a bastion
of patrician decadence. Oakes' ten-
ure came to an abrupt end in 1943,
when on a trip to the Bahamas he
was bludgeoned to death, soaked in
gasoline and immolated.
The crime was never solved. _
"The actual history and notoriety
of the Winter Club," Mundt said
Thursday night moments before the
vote, "I find dubious."