More often than such serious business, however, the rich were idle. The club thrived until the Great Depression. As the founders died and their children flew to more trendy getaways like Palm Beach, the buildings fell into disrepair. In 1947, the club effectively dissolved and the state took over, preserving the island enough that developers could salvage it 40 years later. Restored in 1986, the Victorian hotel is a National Historic Landmark and Historic Hotel of America.
Visitors arrive beneath a canopy of trees arching in front of restored cottages.
A croquet greensward spreads on the club house's front lawn, next to a putting green bordered with bright flowers. The hotel offers 134 single rooms and suites, decorated with period reproductions. One easily imagines the nation's leaders making decisions that shaped the world while dealing cards in the evenings, wading into the forests to bag turkey or sipping tea on the verandahs. You feel a part of it, I guess. I'm not as impressed with their money as their political pull, how they shaped the world sitting right here on this porch.