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.