Women relax under the buttonwood tree in this 1928 photo. The tree still stands at the center of the park in Boca Raton’s Por La Mar. Photo provided by Boca Raton Historical Society BELOW: Sherry, Joshua and Ken Lerner (l-r) with the tree during the annual neighborhood picnic in March. They live in the adjoining Riviera section. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Neighborhood is ‘last vestige of Boca’s beach town ambience’
By Ron Hayes
Por La Mar’s royalty was already present and waiting in dignified silence when members of the Riviera Civic Association began arriving March 8 for their annual picnic in the neighborhood park.
Truly, if this little enclave — “By the Sea” in Spanish — can claim any royalty at all, it’s that tall green buttonwood tree at the center of the park.
The venerable Conocarpus erectus was there before the neighborhood was born a century ago, and it shows no sign of abdicating anytime soon.
“The City Council passed an ordinance declaring it a historic tree on Jan. 14, 1992,” said Keith Nelson, a member of the association’s board of directors and the city’s parks and recreation advisory board.
A Por La Mar resident since 2003, he pointed up Park Drive toward Spanish Trail.
“Capt. Tom Rickards built the first house in Boca Raton right about there in 1897. He wasn’t a real captain, but he was a civil engineer who’d come down to do surveying for Flagler’s railroad extension,” Nelson said. “Everybody talks about Addison Mizner, but Capt. Rickards was Boca’s true founding father.
“I love history,” he added.
Nelson had positioned a couple of easels by the picnic check-in table. One bore a 1928 photograph of ladies relaxing under that same buttonwood tree. The other offered the original platting map for Por La Mar, filed on April 7, 1925, a hundred years ago this month.
The street layout is unchanged today. Park Drive is still Park Drive, Spanish Trail still Spanish Trail, and the little piece of land in the center designated “Park” was still there to welcome the picnickers.
A Boston fern grows from the bark of the buttonwood tree that is the central point of the park. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
“We’re a small town with a beach flavor,” said Katie MacDougall, the Riviera Civic Association president, “yet just across the bridge you’ve got the downtown. This is the last vestige of Boca’s beach town ambience.”
The RCA represents about 400 homes in three adjacent neighborhoods. Sun and Surf, arriving in the 1950s, stretches south from Red Reef Park to Northeast Sixth Street, where the Riviera neighborhood was established in 1945, turning into little Por La Mar south of Palmetto Park Road.
On this afternoon, about 100 residents of all three neighborhoods converged in the park to meet and mingle, dine on chicken, seafood, or veggie paella, and tell a curious visitor how much they love where they live.
“I’ve lived in Sun and Surf since 1971, when I was 9 years old,” boasted Dan Schauer.
Dan and Mary Schauer love the neighborhood so much that two years ago they had their house on Coquina Way torn down to have another built on the same lot.
“We just moved back in after two years in Boynton Beach while the house was being built,” he said. “We wouldn’t have been here so long if not for all the nice people. There’s been a lot of building and reconstruction, but there’s still a lot of old community members, and I’m so happy to be back. It’s nice to get up and walk down the street and put your toes in the sand.”
William Sun was vacationing from Santa Cruz, California, in 2015, when housing was still affordable at the tail end of the recession. He looked up some Realtors on a whim, and wound up buying in Riviera.
“California is very left leaning,” he said, “but here we have a common goal of keeping our neighborhoods development free, so we get in on the ground floor with the City Council.”
Residents enjoy food and friendship at the Riviera Civic Association’s annual picnic for the Por La Mar, Riviera and Sun and Surf neighborhoods at Por La Mar’s park. Por La Mar turns 100 years old on April 7. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
As the afternoon slipped toward evening and more picnickers arrived, you couldn’t help noticing a shortage of younger picnickers, which is why the Lerner family stood out.
Ken and Sherry Lerner had planned to move from west Boca to someplace nearer the ocean once they’d become empty nesters. Their youngest, Joshua, was still in school and living at home.
But then they happened on a fixer-upper in Riviera, one of the modest homes built in 1945, when Boca Raton Army Air Field brought 15,000 service members to a town of 700, along with a huge housing shortage.
Two years ago, they bought the house and had a new nest, not yet empty.
Joshua Lerner is 17 now, and a junior at FAU High School.
“I like it,” he said of his new neighborhood. “It’s definitely different.” He paused. “It’s definitely quiet.” He paused again. “I’ve seen a couple young people around.”
But his father had enough enthusiasm for both.
“The people here are wonderful,” Ken Lerner enthused, “and the vibe is very different. Very chill. This is where we’re going to be.”
By the end of the day, the tables would be gone, the paella eaten, and all the easels and historic photos removed. But the old green buttonwood tree would remain, a hundred years on, still reigning in dignified silence over the little neighborhood park.
“Plans are still not complete, but we’re going to rededicate the tree sometime this year as part of the city’s centennial celebrations,” Keith Nelson promised.
“We’ll sing Happy Birthday to it and maybe have some cupcakes.”
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