4330 Lennox Drive

Coconut Grove is older than Miami. The settlement along this stretch of coast predates the city's 1896 incorporation by decades, it ran as its own municipality until Miami annexed it in a contested 1925 election, and it remains the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in the city. The Grove sits on the Miami Rock Ridge, the spine of oolitic limestone that lifts this coastline above the bay, and its first houses were wood-frame cottages set into the hardwood canopy. This pair on Lennox Drive carries the lineage directly: a main cottage the county dates to 1938 and a guest cottage behind it, together on a 12,500 square foot lot in the South Grove.

The restoration kept the original fabric wherever it survived. The front windows and their wood shutters were restored rather than replaced, the original sliding screen pocket door still disappears into its wall, and a custom teak screen door was modeled on the one the house came with. The wood-burning fireplace works, and the original wood floors were refinished. Hurricane impact glass was added at the rear only, leaving the historic street facade as built.

The kitchen was gutted two years ago: custom cabinetry under Calacatta marble, a Viking range beneath a custom vent hood, Waterworks fixtures throughout. The bathroom followed the same standard, with a Calacatta sink and Waterworks fittings. The guest cottage was finished with polished concrete floors and new HVAC, and the entire property was rewired and replumbed, the old cast iron gone.

The lot is the quiet inheritance. Roughly 80 percent of the landscape was redesigned with mature natives, Dade County slash pines, sabal palms, satinleaf, Spanish stoppers, and a specimen lignum vitae the owners age at 15 to 20 years, set among oolite boulders and slab walkways cut from the same limestone that forms the ridge beneath the Grove. Crushed shell paths run between the plantings, an Ipe deck and pergola hold the space between the two cottages, and a private well handles irrigation. The owners put the replacement value of the landscape alone at $350,000 to $400,000.

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