Widely considered one of the town’s most powerful volunteer boards, the Palm Beach Architectural Commission generally must approve the look of all new architecture in Palm Beach, unless the property falls under the oversight of the Palm Beach Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Courtesy Town Of Palm Beach
A rendering shows the scale of the guesthouse, at the front, in relationship to the larger main house, in the rear, designed for 965 N. Ocean Blvd. in Palm Beach. First presented to the Architectural Commission in May 2022, the revised project was rejected outright by the panel a couple of months later. The vacant lot was later listed for sale.
Courtesy Town Of Palm Beach
After two years of reviewing proposed residential designs for a beachfront lot at 977 S. Ocean Blvd, the Palm Beach Architectural Commission finally approved the design of this house after requesting what amounted to a complete redesign. The house is just down the street from the Mar-a-Lago Beach Club. The owners never built the house and sold the property for $24.5 million in April 2023.
Studio SR Architecture + Design
The Palm Beach Architectural Commission voted unanimously in October 2022 to deny this West Indies-influenced house designed for 243 Seaspray Ave. Board members said it would not complement neighboring houses on the prominent Midtown street, where many homes have Mediterranean-style architecture.
Courtesy Town Of Palm Beach
A rendering depicts a house designed for 243 Seaspray Ave., a project the Palm Beach Architectural Commission killed in July 2023, in part because officials said the architecture was too bulky and blocky. It was the board’s second rejection in less than a year of a home designed for the property.
Courtesy Environment Design Group
The Palm Beach Architectural Commission rejected the design of this contemporary-style house proposed for 218 Merrain Road on the North End in July 2022. The board said its architecture would conflict with the more traditional styles of homes on the street. Commissioners criticized the overall “geometry” of the design, the stone, the color scheme and the amount of glass. “You have a stone garage door — that alone should tell you that this is weird,” one commissioner said about the hydraulically operated garage door.
Courtesy Town Of Palm Beach
A rendering depicts the street side of a house designed for an oceanfront parcel at 7 Ocean Lane on the North End of Palm Beach. In June 2022, the Architectural Commission approved the design, which was commissioned by Sabatello & Cos. to be developed on speculation. But the path to approval was not smooth. Along the way, the design board dealt with two different property owners, two separate design teams, a change in the overall architectural style, a remand by the Town Council and complaints from disgruntled next-door neighbors.
Portuondo Peretti Architects, Courtesy Sabatello Cos.
It took developer Mark Pulte nearly a year to win the approval of the Architectural Commission for the design of a lakefront house he planned to develop on speculation at 446 N. Lake Way. Over the course of 11 months, commissioners demanded repeated revisions to the project, which ultimately morphed from a starkly contemporary design to a Spanish-inspired house. The board’s approval came in May 2018. After the house was built, a company controlled by New York Jets co-owner and Johnson & Johnson heir Woody Johnson paid $33.2 million for it.
DARRELL HOFHEINZ/palmbeachdailynews.com
In June 2022, the Palm Beach Architectural Commission unanimously approved the design of this Regency-influenced house for a North End lot at 311 Polmer Park. But the board’s thumbs-up came only after the panel had reviewed the design at two previous meetings, each time asking the architect to refine the architecture.
Courtesy Cushing Investments LLC
In October 2022, the Palm Beach Architectural Commission killed the design for a two-story lakefront house, viewed in this rendering of the one-story guesthouse, for a property at 1237 N. Lake Way. Commissioners had problems with the project’s layout and the architectural detailing. The project had been in the architectural review process for seven months before the board killed the project.
Courtesy Town Of Palm Beach