Joe CapozziLong-cherished collection at risk as Palm Beach High School Museum prepares to close, depart historic North Flagler Drive structure.
Palm Beach County’s oldest commercial building is in need of repairs and facing an uncertain future after its longtime tenant announced plans to vacate.
The Palm Beach High School Museum, since 1987 located in the tiny historic Dade County State Bank building on the downtown West Palm Beach waterfront, will close by the end of September.
“The reality is that our current building has become infested with termites, receives very few visitors, and continues to cost us $60 to $80 each month in electricity alone,” Dwight Saxon, the museum caretaker, said in a letter to the school’s alumni.
The move affects more than 1,000 pieces of memorabilia — trophies, yearbooks, sweaters, photographs, footballs, school newspapers and much more — documenting the history of the county’s first high school, which opened in 1908 (a year before Palm Beach County was carved out of Dade County) and closed in 1970.
The museum’s most significant and relevant pieces, chosen earlier this year by an alumni committee, will be offered to Yesteryear Village at the South Florida Fairgrounds. Saxon hopes alumni, community members or the Historical Society of Palm Beach County will collect the rest of it this fall.
Whatever is not taken will likely end up at the dump.
“We feel bad that it’s not all going to go (to the fairgrounds), but we just don’t have room for it all,’’ said Saxon, who graduated with the school’s final class in 1970, a year before Palm Beach High School merged with Roosevelt High School to form Twin Lakes High School. (After Twin Lakes closed in 1988, the downtown school stood vacant until 1997 when it became the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Jr. School of the Arts.)
“I got some (alumni) who say, ‘Hey, it’s great you’re doing it.’ I got others who are not happy at all. I can’t please everybody. I get it. It’s a lot of history,” Saxon said.
Cone-roofed building on North Flagler Drive
Moving the most important pieces to Yesteryear Village “will allow our memorabilia to be displayed several times a year during special events, keeping the spirit and history of Palm Beach High alive for the public,” he said in the alumni email.
But many of the trophies, plaques and other wooden pieces headed to the fairgrounds will be fumigated first for termites, Saxon said, underscoring concern about the condition of the 132-year-old, city-owned building the museum is leaving after 38 years.
The 584-square-foot octagonal, cone-roofed building at 401 N. Flagler Drive is Palm Beach County’s oldest commercial structure, having originally opened in 1893 on Palm Beach island as the Dade County State Bank. (At the time, Dade County extended to Stuart.)
By 1897, the building was moved by barge to the mainland where it was home, in several downtown West Palm Beach locations over the years, to a barber shop, dentist’s office, real estate office, beauty salon and, perhaps most memorably starting in 1935, Johnny’s Playland, a trick and novelty shop.
A few years after owner Johnny Eggert died in 1971, his widow donated the building to the city. Soon after, it was moved to the waterfront at North Flagler Drive and Fourth Street, just south of the Flagler Memorial Bridge.
The building became home to the Palm Beach High School Museum in 1987, two years after the 21-story Northbridge Center, known locally as the “Darth Vader Building” opened a few hundred yards to the northwest. West Palm Beach gave the tiny building historical status in 2018.
City has no plans yet for building
But today, the old building is in need of repairs.
Termite damage is visible inside. Beehives occupy holes on the west exterior. Unkempt vegetation has all but covered a historical plaque outside. Homeless people sometimes sleep behind it.
About five years ago, the alumni association installed a small air-conditioning unit. But as alumni have moved away or died, the museum has gotten fewer and fewer visitors, Saxon said.
“I don’t know if the city wants to spend the money to bring it back to where it was, but it’s gotten to the point where if you go behind the museum, you see underwear and beer cans and whiskey bottles,” he said.
He said the museum is just about out of money, making it unable to continue paying monthly utilities.
“We would love to be able to save the building and have it moved to Yesteryear Village,” Saxon said, “but I don’t know if the city would let the building go. And it would have to be termited.”
For now, West Palm Beach has no plans for the future use of the building, said Kathleen Joy, the city’s director of communications.
Yesteryear Village can’t take it on
But if the city ever decides to move the building, it won’t be to Yesteryear Village.
“The building is currently in a state of disrepair, with significant issues, including a termite infestation, which would require extensive restoration work. As a historic site, we have to ensure that any new additions are not only in keeping with the integrity of the village but are also sustainable for the long term,” Matt Wallsmith, president and CEO of South Florida Fair & Palm Beach County Expositions Inc., said in a statement to Stet.
“Our focus is on preserving and maintaining the authenticity of the historical village, and taking on a new project of this scale would stretch our resources too thin,” he said.
But he said Yesteryear Village is interested in displaying some of the museum artifacts in its Bink Glisson Museum.
“In all likelihood, the display would be for special occasions as opposed to a permanent exhibit,” Wallsmith said.
What’s in the archives
Those artifacts include a copy of the 1919 school yearbook, a 1920s clock, sports sweaters from the ‘30s, a baseball bat used by 1985 World Series champion manager Dick Howser, and the band uniforms of identical twins Greg and John Rice.
Other artifacts and photographs pay homage to other famous alumni, including actors Burt Reynolds, George Hamilton and Monte Markham; former University of Florida President Marshall Criser; former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice E. Harris Drew; Time/Warner Chairman Richard Munro; Congressman Harry Johnston; and members of the Rybovich boat-building family.
“I would have loved to see that building moved out to Yesteryear Village,” said Lake Worth Beach resident Greg Rice, who graduated from Palm Beach High in 1969 with his twin, John, who died in 2005.
Rice remembers the initial efforts to save artifacts from the old high school after Palm Beach High had changed to Twin Lakes. At the time, the school’s principal, Bobby Riggs, took many trophies and memorabilia home for safekeeping.
People “were just taking trophies and putting them in cardboard boxes and stomping it down to break it down to be able to put more junk in the box,” Rice recalled.
“They were just filing them up and hauling them off to the dump and somebody said, ‘Whoa; whoa,’ you can’t do that. These are artifacts from the pioneering high school in the county.’ There were, thank goodness, people on the scene cognizant of what was happening and decided to help us and collect that stuff.”
Between 1970 and 1987, Riggs and ophthalmologist Reggie Stambaugh, a fellow alum, collected more than 500 relics, which formed the nucleus of the museum collection over the next 38 years.
Now, Rice said: “We are kind of in a sticky spot with no home. At least we have a home for some of the things.”
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. He publishes the Lake Worth Beach Independent on Substack, covering the town where he lives.
