Arva Moore Parks McCabe Historic Home

When tasked with designing a house for Arva Moore Parks McCabe, the blueprint could not begin with just walls or windows. It had to begin with memory. Arva, the guardian of Miami’s architectural soul, had walked the shaded streets of Coral Gables and Coconut Grove more times than one could count. Arva knew the stories behind every keystone arch and every banyan-lined boulevard. To design a renovation for Arva’s previous home was to create more than a home—it was to construct a tribute to time itself.

We wanted this house to speak—quietly, but with conviction. Let it whisper the past without becoming a museum. That duality—of history and life, of reverence and livability—became our guiding principle for this study.

The site was nestled beneath the oaks in a corner of Coral Gables, not far from the Merrick House she fought so hard to preserve. We began with looking at the Mediterranean Revival bones—stuccoed walls, wrought-iron details, a red-tile roof—but we softened and simplified the design, infusing it with the restraint of early Addison Mizner. Arva believed in authenticity over flamboyance. “Let the craftsmanship show,” she’d say, and so we did: hand-painted Cuban tiles, Dade County pine salvaged from a demolished 1920s bungalow, arched French doors that opened to a sunlit loggia.

The house took shape like a living document. The library, naturally, became its heart. We built shelves high and deep, with a rolling ladder and a fireplace carved in native oolitic limestone. She insisted on a reading nook by the window—”for reflection, not just research,” she said with a smile. Her books—annotated biographies, fragile city plats, faded correspondence—would find their home there, as we would imagine finding her unpublished drafts and notes.

One of her most personal requests was the courtyard garden. Inspired by the cloisters of Vizcaya, it was to be a place where history could breathe. We planted heirloom roses, native orchids, and a mango tree she remembered from childhood. A simple fountain gurgled at the center. “It should sound like memory.”

Technology was integrated discreetly. Arva seemed to welcomed modern comforts but abhorred intrusion. We hid HVAC ducts behind decorative grilles and designed light switches to blend seamlessly with period details. Even the kitchen, thoroughly modern beneath the surface, carried the scent of old Miami with its citrus-tiled backsplash and louvered cabinets.

We designed a gallery in the interior loggia where we had hung sepia-toned photographs of early Coral Gables. We envisioned Arva believing “This isn’t just my house,” as she often spoke quietly, “It’s a conversation—with the past, with the city, with those who’ll remember.”

And so it was. A house for Arva Moore Parks McCabe—historian, preservationist, and storyteller—was never going to be just a design on paper. It had to be a vessel for memory, an echo chamber of the home she loved, and a place where the past could continue to live.