When did West Palm Beach's trendy Antique Row get its name?

The Antique Row district in West Palm Beach was not always chic ... and it wasn't always threaded with antiques.

In fact, if you ventured down Dixie Highway north of Southern Boulevard in the 1990s and early 2000s, you likely would have come across prostitutes strutting boldly by a grungy gas station selling glass pipes.

But now it's full of moneyed newcomers and trendy restaurants, and an annual street fair.

But, as Palm Beach Post real estate reporter Kimberly Miller explained in an in-depth story, a quarrel between party host the Young Friends of the Palm Beach County Historical Society and some shop owners is tainting this year’s affair in a kerfuffle over inviting outside vendors who Antique Row leaders see as interlopers in their hard-earned territory. To read that story, go here.

Arguments aside, the area really has seen a renaissance in the past quarter of a century.

When did West Palm's Antique Row actually come to be known as Antique Row?

When Antique Row officially became Antique Row is muddy, but a 1979 article in The Palm Beach Post-Times uses the moniker to describe a "new goldmine" of seven dealers of vintage wares confined to the 3700 block Dixie Highway. In 1986, a Palm Beach Post story about Dixie Highway highlighted Antique Row shops and restaurants that were part of the transition from semi-shady to demure.

Today, many of those shops are long gone. Arthur Roberts Barber Shop is now Cholo Soy Cocina. The Red Lion Inn is now Palm Beach Designer Fabrics. The Pizza Hut is now City Diner. Ranch’s Drug Store and Fountain is now The Elephant’s Foot Antiques.

Jeffrey Burgess, owner of James and Jeffrey Antiques, said in an interview this year that it was a 1990’s-era Architectural Digest story that cemented Antique Row’s reputation for carrying a bounty of treasures from 1920s Art Deco to mid-century modern. A 1996 story from the same chronicle describes the street as “an unassuming, even slightly dilapidated mile of shops” with “real gems” inside, while a 2003 story compared Antique Row to shopping districts on the Rue de Beaune in Paris or New King’s Road in London.

“We’ve built up this area over a long period of time, and it benefits the city,” said Louise Pinson, who has owned shops on Antique Row since the early 1990s. “In the past, antique stores gravitated toward the cheapest rents, but now we pay a lot to be here.”

Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate and how growth affects South Florida's environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to [email protected]. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Antique stores near me: Facts on West Palm Beach's Antique Row