Villa Mizner: The House That Changed Palm Beach begins with Addison Mizner's eight-year tenure in the home of his dreams. It contains well researched, fictionalized conversations with his famous clients of the 1920s and discusses their grand palaces, several of which were subsequently destroyed. The reader will discover details about Mizner's ill timed, failed attempt to create the model city of Boca Raton. Villa Mizner brings the town palace life with various owners' anecdotes including stories about Mizner's pet monkey, Johnny Brown and his ghost! The proprietors, their friends and family members who cooperate during numerous interviews, have each approved the description of their personal and business adventures while they were the custodians of this important piece of Palm Beach history.
The work of the acclaimed designer of villas in Spanish, Moorish, Venetian, and Mediterranean style, in all-new color photography. The go-to architect for the Jazz Age elite of South Florida and beyond, Addison Mizner created a new architectural style and a new lifestyle for the wealthy and socially prominent of Palm Beach--America's preeminent winter resort town of the time. Building mansions, clubs, hotels and apartment houses with a bent toward fantasy and romance, Mizner established a design vocabulary and tradition that to this day influences architects, designers, and builders. Evocative of old Spain, Venice, and the Moorish capitals of Granada and Seville, Mizner's work is a dream realized: courtyards with fountains, trellises with climbing bougainvillea, arched windows, glazed tile floors, spiraling marble columns, expansive interiors with grand proportions. This book explores Mizner's legacy through the extraordinary houses and other structures he built, including such storied homes as La Guerida, an 11-bedroom Spanish Revival mansion, best known now as the Kennedy Estate--the place where JFK he composed his Inaugural Address. Known for their beauty, opulence, fantastic detail, as well as the stories of those individuals who have lived or played in them, the houses and buildings of Addison Mizner stand as monuments to grand living and romance made in stone and iron, stucco and tile.
An architect who excelled at transforming an architectural fantasy into a practical, livable home, Addison Mizner was one of the most original and influential designers America has produced. The houses, clubs, and shops he built for the wealthy of Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Florida, evince a brilliant grasp of how to blend a building with the environment, how to adapt it to the climate and how to situate it in order to make the best use of the elements of sea, light, and air. This lavishly illustrated volume recaptures the genius of Addison Mizner. It contains over 180 photographs — both interiors and exteriors — depicting more than 30 residences, including Mizner's own, plus those of Harold Vanderbilt, Rudman Wanamaker, A. J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., Edward Shearson, Mrs. Hugh Dillman, and many more. Also covered are such landmark Mizner creations as the Everglades Club, Via Parigi, the Singer Building, The Cloister at Boca Raton, the Riverside Baptist Church at Jacksonville, and many others. A superb appreciation by author and journalist Ida M. Tarbell offers fascinating glimpses into Mizner's early life and background, and how it prepared him to develop architecture that "belonged" in the Florida landscape. Inspired by the beauty and charm of the villas and palaces of the Mediterranean, Mizner designed in a Spanish Colonial style far better suited to the subtropical sun and climate of Florida than the transplanted houses of the North at first so common in the state. A new Introduction by Mizner scholar Donald W. Curl offers an additional appreciation of the architect and his innovative and imaginative conceptions, which continue to win new admirers among connoisseurs of classic design. Reproduced from a rare edition much sought after by collectors, this inexpensive volume will be welcomed by architects, students and historians of architecture — and anyone interested in the life and achievements of Addison Mizner.
The Boca Raton Resort & Club, originally known as the Cloister Inn, was designed by famed Palm Beach architect Addison Mizner to house prospective investors in his planned Boca Raton development. His dream, however, dissolved with the end of the Florida land boom and the 1926 Miami hurricane, as his Cloister Inn was acquired by utilities magnate Clarence Geist. Geist hired hotel architects Schultze and Weaver to design a major addition to the hostelry. Reopened as the Boca Raton Club in 1930, it became a principal employer and the primary tourist attraction in Boca Raton in ensuing years, its revival linked in many ways with that of the small community. Join architectural historian Donald Curl as he chronicles the lovely landmark that opened in 1926 as a small inn on Lake Boca Raton and has since become the city's most exclusive destination.
Palm Beach interiors have long reflected the travels, penchants, and whimsies of the town's worldly inhabitants. But as real estate on this tiny barrier island becomes increasingly valuable, residents are calling upon world-class designers to help fine-tune their visions, giving rise to a fresh tropical design vernacular. Fashion designer Josie Natori, for instance, asked architect Calvin Tsao to transform a standard two-bedroom apartment into an airy retreat with rattan furniture and ethnic accessories that are perfectly suited to Palm Beach's subtropical setting and pay tribute to her Asian heritage. These homes aren't slavish copies of interior design magazines or decorators' dictates but testaments to what can be achieved when inspired by the natural beauty of a unique locale and when imagination is one's only limitation. Tropical Chic: Palm Beach at Home captures the enduring charm of newly restored seaside fantasies by Mizner, Fatio and Volk, celebrated for their Cuban coquina courtyards and soaring miradors overlooking tiled pools and arching fountains. Jennifer Ash Rudick, a long-time Palm Beach resident, leads an insider's tour of twenty-five houses, cottages, Moorish casbahs, artists' compounds, and Mad Men-era vintage condos. Jessica Klewicki, a Palm Beach-based photographer, captures extraordinary gardens, verandas, lakeside pavilions, a rustic ranch, and simple pastel Bermudan houses sheltered by dense thickets of Norfolk pines and age-old banyans. It is this eclectic mix of old and new, of Spanish and Caribbean, of contemporary design and sun-faded WASP thrift, that makes Palm Beach chic.
In words and photographs, the story of visionary architect Addison Mizner * Introduced the Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival styles to southern Florida * Designed and developed the resort town of Boca Raton * Designed the exquisite Everglades Club in Palm Beach Addison Mizner transformed Palm Beach and South Florida with his visionary architecture. He designed, among many others, the landmark Everglades Club in Palm Beach and the Boca Raton Resort and Club in Boca Raton. In this detailed biography, Stephen Perkins and James Caughman examine Mizner's life and origins, and explore how the events of his life influenced his marvelous architectural legacy.
In the 1920s, America was afflicted with Miami Madness as speculators and would-be moguls flocked to Florida to make a fortune in real-estate. Here, in this short-form book from award-winning author George B. Tindall, is the story of the greatest land boom in American history.
Addison Mizner’s Mediterranean-style mansions are much-admired Florida icons, where even today you can find many homes modeled with stucco walls and tiled roofs. In the paperback release of Boca Rococo, Caroline Seebohm’s successful biography on the flamboyant architect is more accessible now than ever as it reaches more readers interested in the man himself. Mizner had global experience from San Francisco to China during his early days, before landing in New York and eventually, South Florida. He had no formal training but did possess natural talent, establishing him as architect of the rich and famous. His designs made the city of Palm Beach one of America’s most elegant resort spots—and fed his dream of developing a “Venice-on-the-Ocean” in nearby Boca Raton. Mizner’s plans ended with the collapse of Florida’s real estate boom. He died in 1933, broken and bankrupt. With inspiration from and inclusion of never-before-seen material like floor plans and autobiographical works, and a new foreword written by the author, Seebohm gives readers a complete view of Mizner as one of the greatest architects and more flamboyant Americans.
The Warden House will allow you to travel back in time to a period when the landscape of oceanfront homes was first developed in Palm Beach. Experience the journey of an architectural gem and appreciate the efforts of those who fought to preserve a piece of Addison Mizner's historic handiwork.
This is the first complete biography of the inimitable society architect Addison Mizner, whose Spanish Revival buildings created a new style of resort architecture for Palm Beach and south Florida during the boom years of the 1920s. By 1925, Mizner ranked as one of the country's most prominent architects, as important in his own time as Richard Morris Hunt and Stanford White had been in theirs. The book's 150 illustrations include plans and historical photographs - many published for the first time - showing Mizner's handling of space, the relation of his houses to the landscape, and the many picturesque buildings that combined the comfort and convenience expected by his clients. Donald W. Curl is Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University. The Architectural History Foundation American Monograph Series.
