The Riddle House is an old Edwardian house located in Palm Beach County, Florida. The house was built in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1905 by some of Henry Flagler's hotel construction workers. Originally known as "Gatekeeper's Cottage", the house was home to the groundskeeper of Woodlawn Cemetery. By 1920, the house became privately owned by Karl Riddle, a city manager and superintendent of West Palm Beach. He is the namesake of the house. The house was eventually dismantled and moved to Yesteryear Village in 1995, a historical park within the South Florida Fairgrounds. The building was featured in an episode of Ghost Adventures in 2008.
Constructors of Henry Flagler's hotels began building the Riddle House on July 1, 1905, using leftover wood. [1] [2] Originally located at 327 Acacia Street in West Palm Beach, the house was nicknamed "the painted lady", because of its bright colors. [1] However, the dwelling would officially be known as "Gatekeeper's Cottage" early on because it served as the residence of the keeper of Woodlawn Cemetery, located just across Dixie Highway. [2] The house also originally served as a funeral parlor. [3] In 1914, Gatekeeper's Cottage became "City House" after being purchased by the West Palm Beach city government. [2]
It was acquired by Karl Riddle in 1920, who is the namesake of the house. Riddle was the first city manager and superintendent of public works of West Palm Beach. [1] After being recalled in 1923 by a margin of five votes, [4] Riddle moved out of the house, which then became a temporary residence for new city employees. [2] Riddle and his twin brother Kenyon later built houses on a 36 acres (15 ha ) property just outside the city in 1935. This area would later become incorporated as Cloud Lake in 1951 after a vote by residents. [5] In 1972, artist Mary Ann Hayes acquired the house at an auction for just over $21,000 and converted it into an art school, the Flagler Arts Center. [6] Palm Beach Atlantic College (PBA; now Palm Beach Atlantic University) then purchased the Riddle House in the early 1980s and used the residence as a dormitory for several years. Later, the house was scheduled for demolition due to expansion of the college. [2] [7]
However, PBA instead decided to donate the building to the Yesteryear Village committee South Florida Fair board of directors. John Riddle, nephew of Karl Riddle, then served as chairman of the committee. [8] After professionals estimated that relocation of the house would cost about $50,000, John Riddle instead recruited 60 volunteers. [7] Between August 12 and August 13, 1995, the Riddle House was dismantled and moved to the Yesteryear Village. The roof and attic were split in two, as were the first and second floors. Finally, the building was reassembled after reaching Yesteryear Village. [8] Through a $450,000 state historical grant, the Riddle House was also restored to its 1920s appearance. [7]
The house was also featured in 2008 on the ghost-hunting paranormal television series Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel. [9]
Palm Beach is an incorporated town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. Located on a barrier island in east-central Palm Beach County, the town is separated from West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach by the Intracoastal Waterway to its west and a small section of the Intracoastal Waterway and South Palm Beach to its south. It is part of the South Florida metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, Palm Beach had a year-round population of 9,245.
Royal Palm Beach is a village in southeast Florida, located within Palm Beach County. Despite its name, the village is located approximately fifteen miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. The population was at 38,932 residents in the 2020 US census.
West Palm Beach is a city in and the county seat of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is located immediately to the west of the adjacent Palm Beach, which is situated on a barrier island across the Lake Worth Lagoon.
The Royal Poinciana Hotel was a Gilded Age hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, United States. Developed by Standard Oil founder Henry Flagler and approximately 1,000 workers, the hotel opened on February 11, 1894. As Flagler's first structure in South Florida, the Royal Poinciana Hotel played a significant role in the region's history, transforming the previously desolate area into a winter tourist destination and accelerating the development of Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. Two months later, Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway reached West Palm Beach, while a railroad bridge built across the Lake Worth Lagoon in 1895 allowed guests direct access to the hotel. In 1896, Flagler opened a second hotel nearby, The Breakers. The success of both hotels led to expansions of the Royal Poinciana Hotel in 1899 and 1901. By then, the building had reportedly become both the largest hotel and largest wooden structure in the world at the time.
The Hurricane of 1928 African-American Mass Burial Site is a pauper's cemetery and mass grave in West Palm Beach, Florida. It is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The cemetery is situated near the junction of 25th Street and Tamarind Avenue between I-95 and U.S. Route 1. The site is the location in which 674 bodies of African Americans or those of an unknown race were buried following the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, while most of the white victims of the storm received a proper burial at Woodlawn Cemetery due to segregation laws.
The Breakers Palm Beach is a historic, Renaissance Revival style luxury hotel with 538 rooms. It is located at 1 South County Road in Palm Beach, Florida. The current structure, opened in December 1926, is the third version of The Breakers, as the previous hotel buildings on the site burnt down in 1903 and 1925. During the 1895-96 winter season, business tycoon Henry Flagler opened the first Breakers resort, then the only oceanfront south of Daytona Beach, to accommodate additional tourists due to the popularity of his Royal Poinciana Hotel. Known as the Palm Beach Inn upon its original opening, the hotel was renamed The Breakers in 1901 after guests requested rooms "over by the breakers." Although the Royal Poinciana Hotel permanently closed in the 1930s due to the Great Depression, The Breakers instead became a primary resort in Palm Beach, hosting many famous guests throughout the years.
The Brelsford House was a historic home in Palm Beach, Florida, United States, located at 1 Lake Trail. Built between 1888 and 1903, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 3, 1974. The Neoclassical house was destroyed in August of the following year, but it remains on the Register.
The effects of Hurricane Wilma in Florida resulted in the storm becoming one of the costliest tropical cyclones in Florida history. Wilma developed in the Caribbean Sea just southwest of Jamaica on October 15 from a large area of disturbed weather. After reaching tropical storm intensity on October 17 and then hurricane status on October 18, the system explosively deepened, peaking as the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. Wilma then slowly weakened while trekking to the northwest and fell to Category 4 intensity by the time it struck the Yucatán Peninsula on October 22. Thereafter, a strong cold front swept the storm northeastward into Florida on October 24, with landfall occurring near Cape Romano as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 120 mph (190 km/h). Wilma continued rapidly northeastward into the Atlantic Ocean and became extratropical on October 26.
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the U.S. state of Florida.
The South Florida Fair is an annual fair held in West Palm Beach, Florida every January. The fairgrounds site occupies 100 acres and is located on the site of the former Palm Beach Speedway at the intersection of Southern Boulevard and Fairground Road, adjacent to the iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre. In 2012, the fair celebrated its 100th anniversary since its founding in 1912. Nearly 500,000 people attend the South Florida Fair each year.
Golfview was a town in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the United States. Golfview was chartered on June 11, 1937. The town, located near the southeast intersection of Belvedere Road and Military Trail and in very close proximity to the Palm Beach International Airport, remained small in both population and area. The highest recorded population of Golfview was 210 people, according to the 1980 census. By the mid-1980s, expansion of the airport and the surrounding area caused many residents to begin selling their homes. The town of Golfview officially dissolved on September 1, 1998.
The effects of the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane in Florida included at least 2,500 fatalities in the state, making this the second deadliest tropical cyclone on record in the contiguous United States, behind only the 1900 Galveston hurricane, as well as the deadliest weather event on the East Coast of the United States. The storm originated from a tropical depression that developed near Senegal on September 6. Traversing westward across the Atlantic Ocean, the cyclone struck the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas as a powerful hurricane. Early on September 17, the storm made landfall near Palm Beach, Florida, as a Category 4 hurricane on the modern-day Saffir–Simpson scale. After initially moving northwestward across Florida, the cyclone curved north-northeastward near the Tampa Bay area. The hurricane briefly re-emerged into the Atlantic prior to striking South Carolina on September 18 and becoming extratropical over North Carolina on the next day, before the remnants lost their identity over Ontario on September 21.
Hurricane Floyd in 1999 threatened Florida as a major hurricane roughly three times as large as Hurricane Andrew. Floyd originated from a tropical wave well east of the Lesser Antilles on September 7. While approaching the Bahamas, the storm strengthened significantly between September 12 and September 13. On the latter day, Floyd peaked as a strong Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale. However, upon moving closer to the Bahamas, the storm fluctuated in intensity between a Category 3 and a Category 4 hurricane. A subtropical ridge eroded by a mid- to upper-tropospheric trough over the eastern United States caused Floyd to curve northwestward over the Abaco Islands and later to northeast, avoiding a potentially catastrophic landfall in Florida. The storm made its closest approach to Florida early on September 15, passing about 110 mi (180 km) east of Cape Canaveral.
The history of West Palm Beach, Florida, began more than 5,000 years ago with the arrival of the first aboriginal natives. Native American tribes such as the Jaegas inhabited the area. Though control of Florida changed among Spain, England, the United States, and the Confederate States of America, the area remained largely undeveloped until the 20th century. By the 1870s and 1880s, non-Native American settlers had inhabited areas in the vicinity of West Palm Beach and referred to the settlement as "Lake Worth Country". However, the population remained very small until the arrival of Henry Flagler in the 1890s. Flagler constructed hotels and resorts in Palm Beach to create a travel destination for affluent tourists, who could travel there via his railroad beginning in 1894.
West Palm Beach station is an inter-city rail station in West Palm Beach, Florida. It is served by Brightline, connecting West Palm Beach to Downtown Miami and Orlando International Airport. The station is located in downtown West Palm Beach, on Evernia Street between Rosemary Avenue and Quadrille Boulevard. This is about half a mile east of Amtrak and Tri-Rail's West Palm Beach station and half a mile south of the older Florida East Coast Railway station that operated on the same tracks in the first half of the 1900s, next to where Quadrille Boulevard turns south after crossing the Flagler Memorial Bridge.
Woodlawn Cemetery is located at 1301 South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach, Florida. It consists of three cemeteries: Woodlawn Cemetery, the Jewish Cemetery, and Woodlawn Cemetery North.
Palm Beach County is a county in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. Its history dates back to about 12,000 years ago, shortly after when Native Americans migrated into Florida. Juan Ponce de León became the first European in the area, landing at the Jupiter Inlet in 1513. Diseases from Europe, enslavement, and warfare significantly diminished the indigenous population of Florida over the next few centuries. During the Second Seminole War, the Battles of the Loxahatchee occurred west of modern-day Jupiter in 1838. The Jupiter Lighthouse, the county's oldest surviving structure, was completed in 1860. The first homestead claims were filed around Lake Worth in 1873. The county's first hotel, schoolhouse, and railway, the Celestial Railroad, began operating in the 1880s, while the first settlers of modern-day Lake Worth Beach arrived in 1885. During the 1890s, Henry Flagler and his workers constructed the Royal Poinciana Hotel and The Breakers in Palm Beach and extended the Florida East Coast Railway southward to the area. They also developed a separate city for hotel workers, which in 1894 became West Palm Beach, the county's oldest incorporated municipality. Major Nathan Boynton, Congressman William S. Linton, and railroad surveyor Thomas Rickards also arrived in the 1890s and developed communities that became Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, and Boca Raton, respectively.
Elisha Newton "Cap" Dimick was an American politician and pioneer of modern-day Palm Beach County, Florida. Born in Michigan in 1849, the Dimick family moved to the area now known as Palm Beach, Florida, in 1876. Dimick built his own residence there in the late 1870s and in 1880, converted it to the Cocoanut Grove House, then the only hotel between Key West and Titusville. He became a politician in the 1890s, serving one term in the Florida House of Representatives and later four terms in the Florida Senate as a member of the Democratic Party. Dimick also co-founded the Lake Worth region's first bank in 1893, the Dade County State Bank, which assisted Henry Flagler in providing compensation to workers constructing the Royal Poinciana Hotel and The Breakers. Today, the bank building is considered the oldest surviving commercial structure in Palm Beach County.