Village West homes declared historic

One of the original houses on Hibiscus Street.

Miami's HEP Board (Historic and Environmental Preservation Board) declared about 40 wooden shotgun homes in Village West as historic at a meeting on Tuesday, which means they cannot be destroyed and they are now part of the historic record of South Florida.

These homes are part of Coconut Grove history -the first homes built in the Grove from the earliest days. 

Not all homeowners are happy, as they feel their hands are tied when it comes to selling the homes or restoring and/or fixing up the homes. 

So much of the rest of Coconut Grove has been destroyed or built over, if only this was part of the whole village starting maybe 40 years ago, the Grove would be a totally different place today.

Hopefully this new designation will have the developers on the run. They can't destroy Coral Gables and other parts of the county, so they come to Coconut Grove to do their damage.

Historic homes and districts have traditionally had higher values than other parts of cities. The City of Miami will work with homeowners so as not to burden them by owning these historic homes now.

An original house on historic Charles Avenue.

From a HEP Board report: "These homes in Village West are associated with the overall establishment and continued settlement of the area by black Bahamians, African-Americans from the South and their descendants. The homes are associated with the early history and development of Coconut Grove."

During the late 1800s, a mass immigration from the Bahamas to the US occurred. Criteria for designation of the houses as being historic included the historical nature of the houses, including cultural, political, economic and social trends in the community; they must portray an environment in an era of history and embody distinguishing characteristics of an architectural style, period or method of construction. A few were dropped from the list at Tuesday's meeting, the the majority made the cut.

In Center Grove is being destroyed by over-development, let's hope the neighborhoods can now have some sort of limitations when it comes to over-development.

Here in the dropbox is info on the existing wooden homes.

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