page_title: Addison Mizner
section_title: Selected buildings
hierarchical_section_title: Addison Mizner / Selected buildings
caption_attribution_description: Palm Beach, Florida: Everglades Club
context_page_description: Addison Cairns Mizner was an American resort architect whose Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style interpretations left an indelible stamp on South Florida, where it continues to inspire architects and land developers. In the 1920s Mizner was the best-known and most-discussed living American architect. Palm Beach, Florida, which he "transformed", was his home, and most of his houses are there. He believed that architecture should also include interior and garden design, and set up Mizner Industries to have a reliable source of components. He was "an architect with a philosophy and a dream." Boca Raton, Florida, began as Mizner's project.
  The 6-foot-2-inch, 250-pound bon vivant epitomized the "society architect." Rejecting other modern architects for "producing a characterless copybook effect," he sought to "make a building look traditional and as though it had fought its way from a small, unimportant structure to a great, rambling house that took centuries of different needs and ups and downs of wealth to accomplish.
context_section_description: Mizner designed the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, in 1912.
  Mizner's first major Florida commission was the Everglades Club, a Spanish-mission-style convalescent retreat built in 1918, that became (and remains) a private club. It stands at 4 Via Parigi (off Worth Avenue) in Palm Beach.
  Mizner designed the 37-room El Mirasol ("the sunflower"), completed in 1919, for investment banker Edward T. Stotesbury, head of the town's most notable family of the time. It included a 40-car garage, a tea house, an auditorium and a private zoo. The mansion stood at 348 N. Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, but was demolished in the 1950s.
  La Bellucia, at 1200 South Ocean Boulevard, was built in 1920 for Dr. Willey Lyon Kingsley. In 2009 it was Palm Beach's largest recorded sale at $24 million.
  Also in 1920, Mizner built a grand Palm Beach estate home called Costa Bella ("beautiful coast") at 111 Dunbar Road for Elizabeth Hope Gammell Slater. Her father was Prof. William Gammell, and her grandfather was Robert Ives of the firm Brown and Ives. In a story published in The New York Times in 1882, her mother was "reckoned the richest woman in America, her property placed at twenty millions or more." Addison Mizner used his primary builder and contractor at that time, Cooper C. Lightbown, who later became the Town of Palm Beach's Mayor from 1922 to 1927.
  In his book Mizner's Florida, author and historian Donald W. Curl noted the home's "massive stone staircase" and that the home was more formal than Mizner's typical work. This formality is seen in such details as the pure Belgian black marble he used in the entrance foyer, and one of the first uses of terrazzo flooring for the 1920s showcased in the palatial dining hall. Furthermore, Curl notes the "stalactite" lighting fixture and gothic tracery for the dining room ceiling. It is believed that Mizner replicated the plasterwork in the dining room from photographs of the Alhambra that he had taken from his travels in Spain. Costa Bella's massive ballroom and dining hall feature grandiose palladian windows and french doors. Hence, historian Curl comments that, "the extensive fenestration created an open and light vacation house." Costa Bella is the quintessential example of Mizner's architectural majesty encompassing all the elements and building materials he is famous for: towering hand-stenciled wood beamed cypress ceilings, coral stone flooring, antique tiles, elaborate decorative columns and corbels, unique light fixtures, stone carvings and stone-carved fireplace mantels.
  In 1922, Mizner built the William Gray Warden Residence (Warden House) at 112 Seminole Ave, Palm Beach, which is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
  Another fanciful Palm Beach mansion, Villa Flora, was built in 1923 for Edward Shearson. It stands at 110 Dunbar Road.
  La Guerida ("bounty of war") was built in Palm Beach in 1923 for Rodman Wanamaker of Philadelphia, heir to the Wanamaker's department store fortune. It was later purchased by Joseph Kennedy in 1933 during the depths of the Great Depression for a paltry $120,000, and eventually would become President John F. Kennedy's "Winter White House". It stands at 1095 N. Ocean Boulevard.
  As early as 1925, Mizner was commissioned by Dr and Mrs (Lillian) Thomas Dempsey to build a beautiful, diminutive Mediterranean Revival summer home (possibly the smallest structure Mizner ever built). The house has 22' ceilings, enabling the architect to install a "mezzanine-loggia," circumlocuted by the hand-wrought iron railings for which a classic Mizner building is known. The house, at 100 S. Osborne Avenue, Margate, New Jersey (formerly 8704 Atlantic Ave) is on a beach block corner where Atlantic Ave intersects Osborne. (A stone's throw away, another architectural landmark, known as Lucy the Elephant, holds court at the corner of Atlantic and Washington Avenues.) Jeff Rosen of Spielberg Productions, who purchased the home from the Dempsey estate, later sold it to Marsha & Michael Birnbaum of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It has since been purchased and is occup
caption: Everglades Club
exif: {"Image Make": "EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY", "Image Model": "KODAK C875 ZOOM DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "480", "Image YResolution": "480", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "504", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "13054", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5133", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "64", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:11:28 10:26:38", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:11:28 10:26:38", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "9", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "1", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "39/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "12750", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "64", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "37", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}