Fall Comes to South Florida

The Lake Worth municipal beach on October 10, looking north at Benny's and the pier.

It happened. It's always like this. It happens all of a sudden. You look up one day and say to yourself: "What is it? What's changed? Something is different." And then you realize that the palm trees are rustling, that the air is clear, and the stickiness is gone.

Fall has come to Florida, finally. It happened yesterday. The air all of a sudden was clear...almost crisp. Maybe not exactly crisp. But it felt crisp compared to the day before, and the week before, when you felt weighted down by the humidity and wondered when it would finally go away.

The weather yesterday and so far today has been extraordinary....so different, such a relief, so pleasant, so lovely. I hear rustling now, of pine trees and palm fronds, and the sky outside my window is exceptionally blue with a few cheerful looking white clouds here and there.

The beach as also been extraordinary, the ocean still warm and the sand not as hot. We go there in the evenings and stay until it is almost dark.

Opening of the 60th Season at the Lake Worth Playhouse

The Lake Worth Playhouse at 713 Lake Avenue

It wasn't exactly Opening Night. It was the night before Opening Night last night at the historic Lake Worth Playhouse, with the preview performance at 8 p.m. of Rogers & Hammerstein's musical "The King and I."

It started a bit slow, and I suddenly thought what a terrible decision I'd made to come, and with my two-year-old!  But things turned around with a remarkable performance by a young woman named Nathalie Andrade playing Tuptim, who sang beautifully and mournfully about her love for another man (not the king). What is this girl doing here in Lake Worth? She should be singing on stage at La Scala! Really.

By the end of the first act, all of the actors were inhabiting their roles quite nicely -- even charmingly -- and the audience became noticeably interested in the dilemma faced by the King of Siam (played by Bryan Wohlust) and the position of the English governess (played by Katie Angell Thomas) whom he'd hired to come to teach his five dozen children and many wives..or "..those wives who are currently in royal FAVOR" as the king liked to bellow.

My two-year-old son did not blink for almost the entire first act, and into the second act, I realized what a superb decision I had made to come see this show.

Opening night was, Friday, October 5, at 8 p.m. There are two performances Saturday, October 6 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. and a 2 p.m. show on Sunday. "The King and I" runs for three weekends, with the last performance on Sunday, October 21. For tickets, go by the box office or call 586-6410.

Click here to see photos of the show, courtesy of the Lake Worth Playhouse.

Saltillo Tiles: A Joy Forever

I happened to bump into my landlord's brother yesterday in the courtyard of our building, and learned that my landlord, Tony Fruci, searched far and wide to find the most authentic saltillo tiles to pave the front walk that leads into the courtyard, up three stairs, and then down and out to the back parking lot.

Well done, I told the brother. Worth every penny, and all the trouble. These are the most beautiful saltillo tiles I have ever seen. I love that they don't have that glazed look. They're very matte, almost dusty looking. And the variation in color is gorgeous, from pink to beige to rust-colored to yellow-orange and brown. It's all in there.

Authentic Mexican saltillo tiles in an outdoor walkway of an
art deco apartment building on Lakeside Drive.

It's interesting to me that these tiles work so well with an art deco building, because it seems you would usually find these in a Mediterraean-style home that is going for the Mexican colonial or Southwest look. Art deco is not rustic, by definition. It is "decorative" -- more refined and artful. But I'm glad my landlord didn't overthink this, and saw in his mind how well this would work. It does!

Can you spot the pawprint?

Reading something online about saltillo tiles a few weeks back, I found out that the most authentic tiles often come with pawprints in them -- or footprints from chickens. These are not thought to be defects, but marks of authenticity, as the real saltillo tiles made in Mexico are made of clay found in the area around the town of Saltillo, and are set out to dry wet, apparently in an area that is not enclosed by a fence. If you've been to Mexico, you know how many stray dogs there are wandering around. I think they call them "perros malish." But I could be confusing Russian and Spanish.

I pointed out this pawprint (in the photo above) in one of the tiles at the bottom of our stairs to my two-year-old the other day. And now I think: Oh, how nice it is for that poor little stray Mexican doggie to have made an imprint on the world. His life was not for nothing!

Looking down on the walkway from the second story landing

Deco Fabulous

What an entrance!  I cannot get over the beauty of this small art deco building at 701 North Federal Highway that now houses a church called Iglesia Bautista De Jesucristo.

 

People rush by in their cars without ever seeing it, I think. A preservationist wrote in an article that people make design mistakes because in cars, you don't have time to notice details of the front of buildings. You really have to be on foot, and then look, and look, and look some more, before you can See.

 

But whatever did this used to be? I have a hard time believing it was built to be a church.

Lake Worth Municipal Beach 2011

Should we call this a pergola, or a palapa, or something else?

I loved this beach when I first came here from Key West. I mean, I really marveled at it. It felt old -- like Atlantic City in the 1960s old. You'd always see people sitting here in the shade, on the edge of the small cliff, looking down on the beach, and out at the water. When I took my child here in late 2010 and early 2011 there were often older couples with sweaters over their shoulders walking very slowly through here, or sitting on the benches. It was nice. Quiet. And the ocean was wild, rough, wondrous. It was a big change coming from Key West where the waves are broken by the reef that surrounds the island. You only see waves around Key West when there's a hurricane passing by, and then only on one side of the island. Here the ocean is full force.

I thought they would take all of this out when they rebuilt the casino, and they did. The benches also. I took close-up photos of the benches, and thought I might be able to use these colors when I got my apartment painted. But would you believe it? I couldn't find these shades of pink and yellow on the color swatches. Too old-fashioned, I guess.

The Lake Worth Historical Museum

Old faces stare out at you from the black-and-white photographs covering the walls of the Lake Worth Historical Museum, and all of a sudden you realize how quickly things have changed. And without anyone really noticing.

Below is a photo of Hank Hall, who served as Lake Worth's police chief from 1959 to 1968. A photograph hanging near this one shows the entire Lake Worth police force in those years. It consists of about 20 men.

Lake Worth Police Chief Hank Hall, who served from 1959 to 1968

Lake Worth doesn't have a police department anymore. We contract with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, paying them $14 million a year to keep us safe. Who are the deputies who cover Lake Worth today? Are they are neighbors? Our sons, uncles, nephews? Do they live here?

                                                                                                               Besides photographs, the museum has on display a lovely art deco wardrobe and dresser, mannequins with clothes worn in Lake Worth 100 years ago, old stoves, typewriters, sewing machines, a piece of wood from the fist bridge built over Lake Worth in 1919, old maps showing the original platting of the city, cultural displays for the Finns, Lithuanians and Poles that helped settle the area and an advertisement from the late 1940s maybe for a "Complete Luncheon for Only 58 cents" at the Park Lane Cafeteria at 922 Lucerne.

The museum, which is spread out over a few small rooms on the second floor of the City Hall Annex at 414 Lake Avenue, is operated by the Lake Worth Public Library. It is now open just two afternoons a week, Wednesday and Friday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. It is staffed by volunteers.

The Lake Worth Casino and Baths, not long before it opened in 1922, had slot machines until the 1930s.

Art deco wardrobe and dresser with art deco sculpture on top

Displays for the founding communities of Lake Worth -- the Fins, Lithuanians and Poles -- in the foreground lead to a room with photos and information about the founding of the first churches.

Photos showing scenes of life in the early years of the city. The top photo shows a tour car advertising trips from St. Louis, Mo. to Lake Worth, Fl. In the background is the Lake Worth Herald building. The photo was taken in 1912, the year the paper began printing.



The Birthday Cake Castle is For Sale

The Birthday Cake Castle, 1 5th Avenue South, Lake Worth, Florida

The New York Times recently did an article on magnificent historic homes for sale at bargain basement prices around the country. But they missed this one.

http://www.palmbeachflorida.com/listing_sheet/R3281272

The Birthday Cake Castle, immediately south of the playground at Bryant Park in Lake Worth, is lovely to behold as you drive south on Lakeside Drive.

And it's now for sale -- for $2,375,000. Ok, not really bargain. But this is a gorgeous home. A palace, really. Or about what I imagine Jay Gatsby's home looked like.

The home was built by Sherman Childs, Addison Mizner's protege. It has 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms and 2 half bathrooms, and a rich history. It was inhabited for a time by WWII correspondent Upton Close. He founded the right-wing Constitutional Party, and had newsletters printed in a print shop in the basement while his independently wealthy wife Margaret Fretter Nye wrote books on a typewriter in the octagonal turret.

Since the 90s, it has been owned by Farouk Hammad, who paid $23,430 in property taxes last year.