The coral-pink holdout on Braganza
A historic-designation bid in South Grove, Greek food in the old Sereia room, and Vizcaya open late next Friday.
Barbara Lange has spent 15 years watching her South Grove block thin out. Walking her dog Chumley, she can point to the lots where older houses stood, name the neighbors who lived in them, and count the boxy replacements. So she applied to have her own place — a two-story built in 1925 at 3901 Braganza Ave., a year before the Coconut Grove Playhouse — designated historic by the City of Miami. The city's preservation board unanimously approved a preliminary evaluation this month; staff flagged the stucco, tiled roof, arched openings and twisted columns, plus substantial evidence the house was designed by Walter DeGarmo. Board member Bob Powers called it "a treasure to save." Further evaluation and a public hearing come next, and designation follows the property after a sale. "When I'm dead and gone, I just would like it to stay," Lange said.
Greek food takes over the old Sereia room
A Greek restaurant has opened in the space Sereia used to occupy, the Herald reported at the end of last week. The address is the part that registers. Turnover in the village center is ordinary enough, but a specific room going dark and then not staying dark is the difference between a slow block and a working one. Expect people to keep calling it the Sereia space for a while yet, the way directions around here always lag a year or two behind the signage. Whether it holds is the question every new Grove opening carries. For now, the lights are on.
A name attached to the business district
Mark Burns is executive director of the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District, and citybiz ran a Q&A with him on Monday. The people who hold district-level jobs rarely surface in local coverage; a resident could go years without learning who sits in this particular chair. A Q&A is the format where someone in that seat talks in full sentences rather than motions and minutes, which makes Monday a small increase in the amount of daylight around the district. At minimum, the Grove now has a name to attach to the title.
Ginger Seabrook wrote down what the Grove keeps forgetting
Seabrook is 18 and the great-great granddaughter of Commodore Ralph Munroe, which means the neighborhood's history and her family's are more or less the same document. She earned a Girl Scout Gold Award for documenting the history of Coconut Grove and, more usefully, for building a way to hand that history to other people. Most kids leave for college carrying the place they grew up in as a loose set of impressions. This one turned it into something the rest of us can actually consult, at exactly the moment the physical evidence around here keeps getting hauled away in dumpsters.
Perler beads at the branch, Saturday the 8th
Fun with Perler Beads returns to the Coconut Grove Library on Saturday, August 8 at 11 a.m., and the branch is billing it for all ages. The setup is tiny plastic beads arranged on a pegboard, which sounds like a kids' activity right up until the adults sit down and stop talking for forty minutes. It is the sort of programming the branch runs steadily without much announcement. It is also a defensible answer to an August Saturday morning in Miami, when being outdoors before noon is a decision rather than a plan.
Vizcaya stays open late next Friday
Summer Fridays returns to Vizcaya on August 7, opening the waterfront gardens into the evening with sunset views, rotating DJ sets and live art scattered through the grounds. It is the museum at its least museum-like: no docent pacing, no ticket-line shuffle, just the estate after hours with the light doing most of the work. Locals tend to treat Vizcaya as a place you take visitors, then go years without walking the gardens themselves. This is the version designed for people who already live down the road.