A wee bit of ol’ Scotland in Hypoluxo

It had an exotic name and was the setting for Body Heat. It died ignominiously. Drive past the Mariner’s Cay condominiums, in the 7600 block of South Federal Highway, south of Hypoluxo Road, and you’ll be where Scotia Plantation once stood.

The 14 acres were owned by James Murray Brown, Hypoluxo’s first mayor. It was home to a two-story, 6,000-square-foot mansion of stucco from ocean sand and white cement that eventually turned a pearl gray, beneath a red tile roof.

The interior had hand-carved cypress and red tile.

Brown “was the epitome of a gentleman, very quiet, very handsome, very dignified,” neighbor Margaret Garnett Harris said in 1989. His father, John Brown, had come in 1895. Two years later, he sent for his wife and four children. He built a two-story frame house he named for his Scotland home. It was sold after his death in 1919 and later was a restaurant and a Prohibition-era roundhouse.

James Murray Brown bought 20 acres just south of his father’s property and built his own house, also naming it Scotia.

Brown sold the home in 1966. It was to become a museum. Eight years later, it still stood empty. A new owner sought a buyer with $1 million and a plan for a condo.

The house changed owners several times. Developers discussed restoring it and moving it elsewhere. It gained new notoriety as the backdrop for the steamy 1981 film noir Body Heat, starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. An episode of Burt Reynolds’ 1989 television series B.L. Stryker also was shot there.

In 1987, developers planned to split the home into three parts, move it a few hundred feet and reassemble it as the library for a senior group home. The group home never happened either.

The property was sold to a Miami developer and later abandoned. People would break in, hold parties and light fires. In the early hours of Sunday, April 18, 1999, a fire burned it nearly to the ground.

“The architecture alone was something that you didn’t see typical of that era, and you definitely would not see it now,” said Gary Eliopoulos, a Delray Beach architect who was active in efforts to restore the home.

The former Scotia Plantation, a 6,000-square-foot mansion, once stood in Hypoluxo. The building was created from ocean sand and white cement that eventually turned a pearl gray, beneath a red tile roof. (Palm Beach Post file photo)

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