Posted on November 18, 2025
The $31 million Phipps Ocean Park restoration is one reason she said ‘yes.’
Danielle Del Sol joined the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach as its chief executive and president in August and says the Phipps Ocean Park project was one of the reasons she said “yes” to the job.
“The park embodies the mission of this foundation,” Del Sol said by phone. “It’s not just about the buildings. It’s the whole environment that matters. It’s the buildings and the human contribution, and it’s the ecology and the way those things come together that makes Palm Beach so iconic.”
Before relocating to Palm Beach, Del Sol served the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans as its executive director. She joined the center in 2011 as managing editor of its publication “Preservation in Print,” then was asked to lead preservation efforts in one of America’s most historically significant cities in 2018.
Del Sol earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Spanish at Hendrix College, a liberal arts school in Conway, Ark., and after graduation, she took a job as a reporter for The Daily Record in Little Rock.
“I was always a writer,” she said. “I was given the real estate and business beats, so I was simultaneously covering historic homes for sale in downtown neighborhoods and meeting the people restoring them. And then I was, at the same time, covering the development of suburban communities 30 minutes outside of Little Rock.”
It was the clash of two worlds. Refurbish and restore carefully or demolish and rebuild quickly. “A few things struck me. First, the people I interviewed who were restoring the buildings were always so passionate about the history of their houses. It really honed the point to me that restoring an existing building is the ultimate form of recycling. I started to think more deeply about those two different aspects, and I really fell in love with the field of historic preservation.”
In search of a graduate program, she visited New Orleans for the first time and fell in love. In 2011, she earned a master of preservation studies in the School of Architecture at Tulane University.
The biggest difference between her job here and her position in New Orleans is that “luckily here in Palm Beach people have the means to renovate structures, and they’re building new structures to such a high degree that they often do have wonderful craftsmanship that most new construction just doesn’t have that anymore. And so, you know, it’s sad that that has been lost over time.
“Here, there is money to do really good work so that’s not the problem. The problem is more helping people appreciate the need for the protection of historic buildings, to help people want to save buildings instead of just tearing (them) down.”
A community is more than just the buildings, she said. “Your history and your family’s history is embedded in this place. And I just thought this is what real community is about. It’s about the place you’re from and investing your time and your heart.”
Del Sol’s working on her own bit of family history. She’s the mother of three children with her husband, entrepreneur Ramsey Green. Their oldest is in sixth grade.
“They miss their friends,” she said. “All they knew was growing up in New Orleans, so it’s been hard at times, but it’s been wonderful overall. Just the ability to be in nature, that we can walk a few blocks to the water and see sea turtles at any given moment. And everybody’s so happy at school, and the teachers have been so nice and welcoming.”
