Historic homes charm their owners

BY KATHY HAGOOD
FOR FLORIDA TODAY

            Suzanne Kennedy and Ian Curtis weren’t seeking out a historic home when they came across a 1925 Mediterranean Revival house in North Cocoa about three years ago.

            The couple just wanted to buy a home in a neighborhood with big, beautiful trees. Curtis, who enjoys woodwork, was set on a garage.

            But after Kennedy walked into the house and it felt like home to her, she asked Curtis to come see it, even though its garage had been torn down years ago.

            “I wasn’t interested but I agreed to check it out. After I walked in, I knew this was the right home for us,” said Curtis, who decided to just add a garage.

            They didn’t know it yet, but their home is part of the Carleton Terrace subdivision developed by B.P. Davis, a historically noteworthy businessman who developed properties featuring Mediterranean Revival styling in other areas of the state such as Miami and Tampa.

            The couple was thrilled with their purchase until they started coming face to face with all the work that needed to be done.

            “We were naïve about how much time it would take to renovate and how many problems we’d come across along the way,” Kennedy said.

            Luckily, the couple’s neighbor is Michael Boonstra, president of the Brevard Heritage Council. Boonstra had bought his 1925 Mediterranean Revival home next door a year before the couple and was able to serve as a mentor for them.

            Boonstra knew of sources and suppliers who could fill the relatively unusual remodeling requirements of their 75-year-old plus home.

What Boonstra didn’t know, one of his colleagues on the council often did because most of them are older homeowners.

“Our members are always happy to help people with older homes learn how to approach rehabilitating them,” Boonstra said.

As the genealogy expert for the Central Brevard Resource Library in Cocoa, Boonstra also knew how to research the history of the Carlton Terrace homes.

            It didn’t take long before Kennedy and Curtis not only had a better idea of how to go about rehabilitating the house, but also caught the history bug and came to greatly value their home’s heritage.

            Articles and advertisements in the “Cocoa Tribune,” the local newspaper at the time detail some of the history of the two homes and others in the subdivision. Carlton Terrace wasn’t finished by Davis because of the bust that followed the Florida land boom.

The homes, which were only about 1,000 square feet when first built, were considered top-notch and full of fancy amenities, including cedar-lined closets.

“We definitely appreciate the home more both because we’ve worked so hard on it and have learned a bit about its history,” Kennedy said. “We feel like we’re stewards of the home taking care of it until it gets its next set of owners.”

While Kennedy has done much of the planning and design for the home’s rehabilitation, Curtis has done much of the hands-on work. It helps that he’s an accomplished welder and wood worker. Curtis crafted the distinctive metal spears and supports that hold up the awning at the home’s front door, for example. He also built a door out of pecky cypress similar in design to those of the home’s historic time period.

Books with photographs and architectural renderings provided inspiration and allowed the couple to take their home back in time.

“I was lucky to buy a home that had had few owners and they left much in the original condition. Their home had many owners and they had a lot of undoing to do,” Boonstra said. “That’s often the case with historic homes.”

Because Curtis was familiar with double-hung windows, he was able to recondition the home’s windows, which had been painted shut by previous owners.

“We get a wonderful cross breeze,” Kennedy said.

Like Boonstra, who’s had much help from his parents, Curtis has stripped much of the old paint from the crown molding, baseboards and other trim in his home to reveal the rich wood underneath. Curtis used a wax finish to enhance the wood.

Both the homes feature book-and-cross style wooden doors and hardwood floors, which took varying degrees of effort to restore.

The two homes, while built the same year, are distinctive. That’s both because of the personalities of the current owners and because the homes were individually designed by architects who were creating one-of-a-kind houses.

“It wasn’t a cookie-cutter subdivision like you often see now,” Boonstra. “Each home was special.”

While the couple and Boonstra have sought to preserve the historic character of their homes, neither has become slavish to the point of turning their homes into museums. Curtis and Kennedy are keeping the glass blocks that were added to their kitchen because they like the way they look. Boonstra is giving his kitchen, which was an addition to the original home by a previous owner, a more modern look than the rest of the home.

Their choices are typical of homeowners who decide to rehabilitate their homes, said historic home expert Tom Muir. Muir is consulting with the Florida Historical Society on the establishment of the historic Rossetter home in Eau Gallie.

“You have to decide to what level of historical accuracy you want to take the home,” he said. “There’s no reason you can’t make an older home more energy-efficient, for example. It’s a balance of preservation and the requirements of your lifestyle.”