Palm Beach architects Anne Fairfax, who sits on the Palm Beach Landmarks Preservation Commission, and her husband, Richard Sammons, vice chairman of the Architectural Commission, are juggling plenty of changes right now.
They will soon be moving Fairfax, Sammons & Partners, their architectural practice, from its longtime Palm Beach location at 214 Brazilian Ave. to a building across town they bought early last year at 189 Bradley Place. Renovations are expected to be finished this fall.
The couple is also finalizing plans to move into their new Palm Beach residence, an apartment above their new office.
And that means they are selling their current home, a double-unit co-operative apartment in the Riviera at 455 Worth Ave., a Midtown building on the curve where the Avenue becomes South Lake Drive. The third-floor apartment is on the four-story building’s southeast corner.
With two bedrooms, two bathrooms and 1,426 square feet of living space, inside and out, Unit 302/303 has been listed with Sotheby’s International Realty agents Lisa and John Cregan and priced at $2.6 million. Co-operative buildings are far fewer in Palm Beach than condominiums and have a different ownership model: Co-op buyers own shares of the building instead of owning their apartments outright.
In addition to their local practice and home, Sammons and Fairfax maintain an office and a pied-a-terre in New York City’s Manhattan borough.
But they have longtime ties to Palm Beach.
“We honeymooned here in 1992, and we’ve been working in Palm Beach since 1997,” Fairfax says. “We landed our first project in Gulf Stream, working with (Palm Beach interior designer) Leta Austin Foster. And subsequent to that, we began working with other clients and saw that we would be here more than occasionally.”
Add in the fact that winters in New York City never especially appealed to her: “I grew up in Honolulu, so I was attracted to being in Palm Beach.”
On the recommendation of their real estate agent at the time, Fairfax explains, they bought their first apartment in the Riviera, No. 302, in 1997. Another purchase came in 2011, when No. 303 became available. Working with contractor James Woolems of Woolems Inc., they joined the two units.
“They were two one-bedroom apartments and combining them allowed us to turn one of the kitchens into a laundry room,” she says. “Having the second bedroom and the laundry room gave us more space — something that we could actually live in rather than park ourselves in every few weeks when we are down here,” Anne explains.
“We removed all the exterior structure at the terrace wall in order to open up the view. We have an unobstructed view of The Everglades Club and (its) lagoon, (and) our attraction to buying the new apartment was that we could do that.”
They kept the general layout intact but repurposed rooms. As such, they didn’t have to carry out a gut renovation, nor redo the kitchen, which is fitted with white cabinetry, Corian counters and glass-tile mosaic backsplashes. They did, however, purchase new stainless-steel appliances.
They also renovated the bathrooms, adding Waterworks fixtures. And they installed new limestone flooring, molding, plantation shutters at the windows and a new air-conditioning system. Almost all the windows and doors feature impact-resistant glass.
The front door opens into the foyer, where they added pickled pine-wood paneling on the ceiling and covered the walls with grass-cloth.
From there, foot traffic flows to a sitting room that’s part of the main bedroom suite. The laundry room is next to the foyer. These rooms are part of the section of the apartment that was originally No. 303.
From the sitting room, one moves into the couple’s first apartment through louvered doors that open into the living room and den. The kitchen is just adjacent as well as the guest bedroom suite.
The living room and the main bedroom suite’s sitting room open to the east-facing balcony.
The den has its own entry doorway, an arrangement that affords privacy for hosts and guests, Fairfax explains.
Built in the early 1950s to a design by architect John Stetson, the Riviera comprises 27 apartments. Services and community amenities include door staff, a gym, a swimming pool and a laundry facility.
“The location has been amazing, and I’ll miss that,” Fairfax says, noting the building’s location near the park by the Palm Beach Marina.
“And when you walk out the door, you are on Worth Avenue — with the Everglades Club, the restaurants and bars — and you can walk to the beach. It’s (all) just super convenient.”
To see more photos of Unit 302/303 at 455 Worth Ave., click on the photo gallery at the top of this page.
For more than 20 years, Christine Davis has written about Palm Beach real estate in the “On the Market” feature in the Palm Beach Daily News.
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