NEIGHBORHOODS
ROB DOWNEY
St. Lucie Estates lots were sold exclusively through Lyons, Atkin & Innes of
which Harry Lyons was a partner. Lyons commissioned this aerial painting
of St. Lucie Estates and surrounding Stuart for his real estate office. Decades
later the late Peter Jefferson, a prominent local architect, found the painting
on a trash pile, and it is now displayed in the Stuart Heritage Museum.
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paign to create the new county and the father of Ernie Lyons,
a notable author and editor of The Stuart News.
Also a member of St. Lucie Estates Inc. was landscape
architect Gerald O’Reilly, who approved the building designs
for the new subdivision and also served as Stuart’s city planner.
O’Reilly was a partner in the noted Miami architectural
firm Pfeiffer & O’Reilly, which had opened a Stuart branch
office in 1925.
The development of St. Lucie Estates was part of a greater
building and migration period in U.S. history, when millions
of Americans moved to Florida during the 1920s. During
that “flapper era,” people had money to travel and invest in
real estate.
So, why not pack up your cares and move to the balmy
Sunshine State?
Like similar boom-time subdivisions in Palm Beach, Coral
Gables and other South Florida communities emerging at
the time, St. Lucie Estates represented a tropical version of
the City Beautiful movement, an early 20th century idea that
advocated the beautification of American cities. Frederick
Law Olmsted — best known for designing New York City’s
Central Park — was a champion of the movement.
“After I became an architect like my father, I developed a
newfound appreciation for the neighborhood I grew up in,”
Don recalls. “Having been schooled in New Urbanism, which
was influenced by the City Beautiful movement, made me see
how St. Lucie Estates embodied the principles of these two
movements.”
He identifies three tenets that contribute to its livability.
First, St. Lucie Estates is based on a street grid with traditionally
sized blocks that makes it easy to navigate from place to >>
ROB DOWNEY
A smaller and simpler version of Tudor Revival is the storybook style, inspired by the English cottage. This stucco storybook house was likely designed by
architect George L. Pfeiffer of Pfeiffer & O’Reilly, a Miami firm that opened a Stuart branch office in 1925 when St. Lucie Estates was first developed.