Delray Beach to move house built in 1937
Delray Beach will pay $125,000 to transport a two-story yellow historic house, designed by the city’s first architect and built in 1937, to 20 N. Swinton Ave.
DELRAY BEACH A house built in 1937, set to be demolished for three townhomes, will make its way through the streets of Delray Beach on a four-minute drive to a new site in the next few weeks.
The city will pay $125,000 to transport the two-story yellow house to 20 N. Swinton Ave., the site of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, which was built in 1939 in West Palm Beach and was also once set for demolition.
“I don’t think it could be a better match with what we’ve got there currently,” Mayor Shelly Petrolia said Tuesday.
The house, at 215 NE Seventh Ave., was built for J.C. Wallbrock, about whom little is known, said Kate Teves, archivist at the Delray Beach Historical Society.
Designed by Samuel Ogren, the city’s first registered architect, the house does not have an official historic designation. It has green shutters, an octogonal window above the front door, a large chimney and a patio above a first floor wing. The historical society has the original drawings, Teves said.
It won’t be the first Ogren house moved in Delray Beach. Ogren designed the Price House, a 1935
Spanish colonial formerly at 526 N. Ocean Blvd. In 2001, the owners decided to move it 1109 Sea Spray Ave. They had to cut the home into thirds and reassemble it.
As South Florida cities have grown and buyers seek contemporary homes and condominiums, many historic houses have been moved in an effort to preserve the architecture of
the early 20th century.
But relocation does not always go smoothly. When workers attempted to move a 1920s frame-vernacular style home at 214 N. Swinton Ave. in Delray Beach, the wall cracked and the entire southeast corner of the structure fell. A building official decided it was unsafe and it was demolished.
Delray Beach architect Roger Cope, who has been advocating to save the house on Northeast Seventh Avenue, said the
structure will be guaranteed for future preservation if it moves to the CRA headquarters because the site is in the Old School Square historic district. Its current owner never sought a historic designation, he said.
The 2,800-square-foot house will be converted to CRA offices. Petrolia said the city will save about $100,000 by moving and converting the house instead of building an office addition to the existing building.