Hubbard/Alvarez Bungalow

A house in Little Havana, the best example of a Belvedere Bungalow in the City of Miami, was saved from the bulldozer by Dade Heritage Trust, which used its Preservation Revolving Fund to purchase the building in August, 2003.

Located at 138 NW 16th Avenue, near the former site of the Orange Bowl, the J. Jacob Hubbard house had been built circa 1921 in the Lawrence Estate Land Company Subdivision. It was home to Rolando and Mercedes Alvarez for 40 years, who enjoyed sitting in the rocking chairs on the breezy front porch with its oolitic limestone piers. Health problems and a desire to live near their daughter in Orlando, however, made a developer’s offer to buy the property, demolish the house and construct an apartment building sound attractive.

Bungalows, a common architectural style from 1914 through 1920, are now fast vanishing in Miami, with DHT listing them on its "Most Endangered Historic Sites List."

This Arts and Crafts bungalow, with its wood shingles, intersecting gabled roof planes, wide overhanging eaves, decorative timbers, Prairie style casement windows, built in cabinetry and a second-story belvedere, is extraordinary in that it has been changed so little. When DHT Executive Director Becky Roper Matkov learned that it was imperiled at a City Historic and Environmental Preservation Board meeting, DHT's Board decided to act. Empowered with a Preservation Revolving Fund, established with support from Miami-Dade County, DHT acquired the house.  DHT then secured its historic designation by the City of Miami and obtained a historic preservation overlay for office use.

DHT restored the bungalow, making it ADA-compliant for office use as headquarters for the environmental nonprofit Citizens for a Better South Florida.

On February 19, 2010, DHT Chairman Walter Alvarez and DHT CEO Becky Roper Matkov were joined by Miami-Dade County Commissioners Katy Sorenson and Bruno Barreiro and City Commissioners Frank Carollo and Francis Suarez in cutting the ribbon for the completed restoration.  The adaptive-reuse of the Hubbard/Alvarez Bungalow demonstrates the “green” building practice of conserving, rather than demolishing, and enahances the community with its historic architecture.