Stiltsville has always been a fascination of mine. I’ve never got a chance to see one of these houses up close, but they really are one of a kind. Only accessible by boat, in their prime, these structures were visited by Miami’s elite and rambunctious partygoers.
Off the coast of Key Biscayne, one or two miles out, you can find a now abandoned community of houses that were built on water with wood/concrete foundations.
At one point there were quite a few of these “stilt shacks”. They say most of them were built in the 1930′s, but the first of them may have appeared back in the 1920′s.
Hurricane Donna of 1965 pretty much destroyed the majority of Stiltsville, and the dozen or so houses that remained were reduced to seven with 1992′s Hurricane Andrew.
The seven houses that remain today are:
A – Jimmy Ellenburg house
B – A-frame house
C – Baldwin, Sessions & Shaw house
D – Leshaw house
E – Bay Chateau
F – Hicks house
G – Miami Springs Power Boat Club
You can see a couple more photos below. Including a map, an interior photo of one of the houses and some photos from the 1980′s.
