Friday, December 11, 2015

The Cottages of Lake Worth: Tour date and prices—a great gift for that admirer of architecture, history, and preservation in Florida

The Palm Beach Post's Kevin Thompson has this small item that is also in today's (12/11) print edition.
     The Cottages of Lake Worth will be offering an Inside The Cottages Home Tour, where visitors can check out more than 10 cottages and gardens while meeting the owners.
     All of the cottages are in the downtown Jewel and Mango Groves neighborhoods. The tour is scheduled for Jan. 24 from 1 to 6 p.m.
Tickets are $30 in advance and $35 the day of the tour and can be purchased:
On Nov. 10, 2013, reporter Lona O'Connor of the Post (now retired) wrote this article titled: Can historical cottages help make Lake Worth the next Key West?

From the article:
     A small group of residents, led by Roger Hendrix, is working on a plan to catalog, publicize and organize tours of the cottages.
     “The idea came to me in 2009 when I moved here from Tennessee,” said Hendrix, who still retains his Volunteer State accent. “I wanted to feature one of our best assets. I think Lake Worth could be the next Key West. No other town in South Florida has the abundance of cottages that we have. It’s our biggest asset besides the beach. [emphasis added]”
     A cottage, in Lake Worth, is usually set on a 25-foot lot, narrower than standard. It would be a narrow wood frame house with one or two bedrooms and crawl space below, said Wes Blackman, a member [former chair] of the Lake Worth historic resource preservation board.
[and...]
     Most of the cottages were built from the 1900s through the 1940s. Back in the days when Lake Worth was being developed, they were part of a package deal: Buy a few acres west of Haverhill Road, get a 25-foot lot to build a beach cottage.
     A member of Hendrix’s group is artist and photographer Anna Maria Windisch-Hunt, who has made color portraits of many cottages and posted them on her blog, Lake Worth Every Minute.
     “Whenever I feature the cottages, my readership spikes,” said Windisch-Hunt, who considers that an indication of potential waiting to be exploited. “This is such a sweet, quirky cottage town.”
To learn more about the Cottages of Lake Worth below is a radio interview, featuring yours truly, with Allan Mason at WBZT with images of our very special cottages:

If you have community news in the City of Lake Worth, suburban Lake Worth (including Palm Beach State College) and Greenacres here is how you contact the current Post reporter:
Email: kthompson@pbpost.com
561-820-4573
Twitter: @kevindthompson1