RE Log - Fall 2022

16 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2022 petitioning Henry Flagler to extend his railroad down to the Miami River, she included a box of orange blossoms from the Munroes’ property. The extension of the railroad in 1896 coincided with the building of a new road, County Road (now South Bayshore Drive and Brickell Avenue), that made it significantly easier to move from Coconut Grove to Miami by land. As Commodore Munroe reflected in his memoirs, “If life on the Bay is now more comfortable, food more varied … we should be thankful, and we are; but we may, perhaps, be forgiven for turning an occasional wistful eye back to the times of exploration, or outward in quest of further empty spaces and lonely refuges.” Scrububs, however, would remain a place defined by adventure and innovation long after the era of its first inhabitants. Its story was just beginning. From Scrububs to La Brisa In 1922 Scrububs became La Brisa, the Mediterranean marvel that stands there today. But one of the many peculiar things about La Brisa is that it could have looked completely different. With Mary Barr in poor health, in 1920 the Munroes sold Scrububs to John Bonner Semple, a chemist and inventor who had made a name for himself — and a fortune — with the “Semple shell torch,” a device that had allowed artillerymen to fire more accurately at night during World War I. After purchasing the property for $100,000, Semple and his wife, Eleanor, immediately made plans to tear down the Munroes’ rustic wood-frame structures and build a stately house in their place, engaging noted Pittsburgh architect Frederick B. Russell to do the job. And then, just like that, Russell dropped dead. He died of a heart attack while touring the property in 1921; Mrs. Semple, according to the Herald, accompanied his body to the undertaker. The Semples decided to go with a new architect who had just completed the nearby El Jardin (now Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart): Richard Kiehnel. New to the area and also a Pittsburgh transplant, Kiehnel had a vision for a Miami aesthetic that would suit the tropical environment as well as the refined tastes of monied Northeastern snowbirds. Forget the breezy Bahamian and Key West styles of the Grove’s pioneer past, when eccentrics designed their own houses to breathe with the tide and blend into the pines. This was the era of heavy masonry, burnt orange terracotta tile, wrought iron — in short, the Mediterranean. Kiehnel wasn’t the first to bring the style to Miami; James Deering’s Vizcaya was already peacocking up the road. But his work crystallized the aesthetic and helped make it ubiquitous around the city. Working with Vizcaya builder John B. Orr, who had developed innovative techniques for making new masonry look weathered, between 1918 and 1922 he built four residences in the Grove that redefined Miami opulence for a generation: El Jardin, La Solana, the Mead Residence and La Brisa. The DNA of these houses would appear again and again in residential and municipal projects around Miami and Coral Gables as Former guest cottage is now the Lampen Family Wellness Center Second floor advancement office