SHPA Series: Space for Place

Little Havana Bungalow Restored

By Margaret Foster | Online Only | Jan. 12, 2010

Little Havana bungalow, saved from demolition and now restored

Credit: Hugh Ryan Construction This month workers are putting the finishing touches on a 1921 bungalow in Miami's Little Havana.

Located a block from the Orange Bowl, the Hubbard-Alvarez bungalow had been abandoned for years when a developer proposed tearing it down. But the nonprofit Dade Heritage Trust bought the house in 2003 and began restoring it as offices for Citizens for a Better South Florida (CBSF), which will buy the house later this month.

"The house was a disaster," says Kelly Altosino-Sastre, executive director of CBSF, an environmental-education group. "I saw it for the first time about two years ago and I said, 'Oh, no.' You could see the ground straight thorough the holes in the floor."

Altosino-Sastre's group worked closely with the Dade Heritage Trust during the renovation process, and will purchase the house outright later this month, thanks to a capital-improvements grant from Miami-Dade County.

"It has been a wonderful win-win for us," says Becky Roper Matkov, president and CEO of the Dade Heritage Trust. "It's in a neighborhood where there are a lot of bungalows that had been treated very badly over the years."

CBSF is looking forward to moving in next month, Altosino-Sastre says. "It's just an absolutely beautiful house. We talk about having meetings on the veranda," she says. "People are going to be jealous of our office."

Original posting at http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2010/todays-news/little-havana-bungalow.html