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On the North End of Palm Beach, where the island’s elevation rises just high enough to command true ocean views, stands a house that its billionaire owner built for a purpose: to disappear into its setting. Turtle Bluff is the winter estate of John S. Middleton — tobacco heir, co-owner and largest shareholder of the Philadelphia Phillies, and a man worth some $4.3 billion — and his wife, Leigh.
A Storied Past and A British Colonial Style
Middleton used an LLC in 2010 to acquire the vacant parcel from a member of the Kraft family, who had once considered building there himself. The lot holds roughly 215 feet of oceanfront shoreline and drops 22 feet from beach to road. The couple, Philadelphia natives who spend their winters in Palm Beach, chose a British Colonial style — the architecture of Caribbean plantation houses and governors’ residences — and Leigh set the brief: “I wanted something really light and airy down here to take advantage of being so fortunate as to be on the water.” The house was completed in 2015 with five bedrooms, twelve bathrooms, and 25,390 square feet of living space inside and out.
But the true achievement at Turtle Bluff lies outdoors. The Middletons handed the landscape to SMI Landscape Architecture, whose president, Jorge Sanchez, treated the site’s steep descent as the design’s central drama. A staircase descends to the west pool through three landings, each marked by water — a bronze lotus fountain at the top, an adjustable jet in the middle, a lily pond below.
Two Pools, A gallery of sorts
The estate holds not one pool but two, each with a distinct purpose. The ocean side hosts a circular walk-in pool ringed by jets arcing from a pair of bronze crocodiles — the couple’s everyday swimming spot. The second pool is deliberately hidden: guests discover it only on reaching the Sunset Pergola, which frames the “secret pool garden” below like a view from a cliff. A separate “secret garden” with a cross-shaped fountain connects the main house to second-story guest rooms.
The hidden west pool with its shell-shaped fountain Source: SMI Landscape Architecture
The house also functions as a gallery of sorts. The Middletons have appeared on ArtNews magazine’s list of the world’s top 200 art collectors since 2010, and their Palm Beach seasons revolve around the island’s cultural calendar.
The house sits on land worth multiples of its 2010 price, but its design ambition is pointed entirely outward, toward the Atlantic.
