Written by Chris Foster
Photography by Luke White
In a reimagined Palm Beach residence from his book Marshall Watson: Defining Elegance, the designer and his partner Kate Reid draw on Mediterranean Revival romance, Jazz Age glamour, and the worldly confidence of the island’s golden years, then make all of it feel like home.
Palm Beach has never been defined by a single moment. Its visual language has evolved through Mediterranean romance, tropical modernism, Jazz Age glamour, and generations of worldly collectors. In Marshall Watson’s hands, that history is not simply preserved. It is given new life.
For this extraordinary residence, Watson approaches tradition as a foundation rather than a restriction. Pattern, architecture, craftsmanship, and color come together in rooms that feel collected over time, yet remain entirely relevant to how we live now. The result is an interior of confidence and character: unmistakably connected to its setting, but never confined by it.
“There’s a cheeky sense of humor in Palm Beach. It’s formal but in a tropical environment, so it doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
A House Worth Coming Home To
The story begins with memory. Both homeowners had spent time on the island since childhood, and each carried early impressions of Palm Beach: its historic architecture, its worldly design vocabulary, its particular brand of ease. When the couple bought a faux Mediterranean house built in the 1980s, they were not looking for a showplace. They wanted a family home that would feel as though it had always belonged there, a place to share with their children and, one day, their grandchildren.
“They wanted timelessness,” Watson says, “and a sense of romance, no matter what.”
That brief gave Watson and Kate Reid, his longtime collaborator and a partner at the firm now known as Marshall Watson & Reid Deane Ganes, a clear set of rules. “My partner, Kate Reid, and I agreed that the success of the interiors relied on certain inviolate principles,” Watson writes. “First and foremost, the house had to be authentically, unmistakably, ‘Palm Beach.’”
Unmistakably Palm Beach, though, did not mean seashells, flamingo prints, or the pastel shorthand that so often stands in for the town. It meant something more specific and far more demanding: tropical Jazz Age panache, 1950s swank, Moroccan romance, and Persian exoticism, all filtered through the island’s long habit of collecting from around the world. “We wanted the home to be inviting, witty, and stylish, but free of anything trivial,” Watson explains. “The idea was to preserve a measure of the formality typical of the local style in its heyday.”
The listing is held by Cindy O’Dare, Richard Boga, and Kristin Dobson of the O’Dare Boga Dobson Group at ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, the team that has come to define serious real estate representation on the Treasure Coast. Their record speaks in numbers the market has not seen before. In 2021, the group held the top three residential sales in all of Indian River County: a twenty-seven-million-dollar sale at 1920 S A1A, a twenty-five-million-dollar sale at 1940 A1A, and a twenty-two-million-dollar sale at 10 Ocean Lane. Those were not coincidences. They were the result of a team that, earlier and more completely than anyone else, understood that buyers capable of transacting at that level exist everywhere in the world and need to be reached where they live.
As of June 2026, the group has accumulated listings totaling two hundred and fifty million dollars in just two months. The total includes an ocean-to-river estate at sixty million dollars, two additional properties at forty-five million each, and a thirty-five-million-dollar Ocean Drive listing alongside the estate at 2120 S A1A. The concentration of inventory at this price tier is not accidental. Sellers at the upper end of the market seek out the O’Dare Boga Dobson Group because they have seen what targeted, internationally oriented marketing can accomplish for a property that most local brokerages would not know how to place.
Cindy O’Dare has made the Vero Beach value proposition a recurring theme in conversations with international buyers, drawing comparisons with Miami and Palm Beach in terms that resonate with sophisticated purchasers who understand land scarcity and long-term asset quality. When the Wall Street Journal covers one of their listings, that reach compounds. A buyer in London, Singapore, or New York who has not yet discovered Vero Beach reads a feature and begins to understand why the Estate Section commands the prices it does.
The philosophy the group brings to every engagement is one client consistently describes: professional in every respect, attentive to the details other teams overlook, and capable of guiding a transaction of this complexity to a conclusion that works for everyone in the room. “Extremely professional,” one client noted. “Attention to detail sets their team apart.” Another: “Experience and knowledge. She walks you through the process with ease.” These are not reviews of agents who simply list homes. They are reviews of advisors who understand that a transaction of this magnitude is personal, that the buyer and seller both need to feel the outcome was right, and that finding the right buyer matters more than finding a fast one.
There is a particular kind of freedom that comes from living without the usual divisions: between shelter and landscape, between private life and the natural world, and between the room you are standing in and the horizon it faces. The estate at 2120 S Highway A1A was conceived as an argument for that freedom, built with materials and craftsmanship to make it a permanent condition of daily life rather than an occasional experience. The limestone floor underfoot, the glass ahead, the Atlantic beyond, the coral reef breathing in its nearby tank, the pool dissolving into the sea: every element in this home is in conversation with the one outside it, and the boundary between them is, by design, something you will never quite be able to find.
That is the point. And in the hands of the team that knows this coastline and its buyers better than anyone else, it will find its way to the person for whom it was always meant.
