Grandview Heights is in Palm Beach County and is one of the best places to live in Florida.
Grandview Heights Historic District
Where
Grandview Heights is one of 13 historic districts located in the City of West Palm Beach, and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1999. The Grandview Heights Historic District is bounded by Park Place, Alabama Avenue, M Street and Lake Avenue.
What
The name Grandview Heights is derived from the neighborhood’s location atop the Atlantic Ridge just south of Okeechobee Boulevard. Residents with two-story homes can see the beautiful Atlantic Ocean over the island of Palm Beach from their second-floor windows.
Why
Living in Grandview Heights offers residents an urban feel and most residents own their homes. In Grandview Heights, there are a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks.
History
The area now encompassed by the City of West Palm Beach was first homesteaded in 1873 and was a sleepy frontier outpost during its first two decades of existence.
On April 2, 1895, Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway began regular rail service to West Palm Beach and the city entered its first period of substantial growth.
Early economic activity was centered around tourists drawn to the area’s lovely beaches and climate, particularly those visiting the Royal Poinciana and Breakers hotels on the island of Palm Beach. Over the next decades, the city experienced cyclical land booms and busts which had the cumulative effect of increasing the city’s population and the demand for single-family homes. By 1920, the city boasted 8,669 residents and a total property value of $12.6 million in 1920 dollars.
The Grandview Heights neighborhood was established in 1910 and its first residents were ministers, downtown shopkeepers, and the craftsmen who built the luxury hotels of Palm Beach. Most historic homes in the neighborhood were completed by 1925.
By 1929, total property values in the city reached $89 million. By 1930 West Palm Beach was in the throes of a land bust in which the speculative buyers who had driven land prices upward abandoned the market and were often personally bankrupted..
The 1980s, brought a case of urban decline, with high crime rates and few property owners interested in maintaining or restoring their historic homes. 9 years later, the City of West Palm Beach acquired approximately half of the properties in the neighborhood and demolished the homes to make way for a planned downtown redevelopment project.
A decade later years later the city’s project was finally completed; today the buildings that were made possible by the city’s eminent domain action have become significant community institutions: the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, Rosemary Square and the Palm Beach County Convention Center.
Now Grandview Heights remains as a highly sought after community with property values continuing to climb as more and more families and residents come looking for the perfect historic home that offers the true definition of work, play, and life downtown.