Casa Bendita

"blessed house"

..set on a ridge facing the Atlantic ocean..

This home was designed in 1922 for US Steel heir, John S. Phipps and his wife Margarita Grace.  It set on a 28-acre property that ran from the ocean to the intracoastal waterway.  Carefully designed for indoor-outdoor life, capturing the breezes, providing cool shade and sunny terraces with romantic vistas, exempified architect, Addison Mizner at his best.  

The house, a Spanish fantasy by the sea could not have been more different from the splendors of the Phipps's famous Georgian country estate at Old Westbury on Long Island.  

Westbury House

71 Old Westbury Road

Old Westbury, New York

Westbury House situated on 200 acres is part of Old Westbury Gardens, the former estate of businessman John Shaffer Phipps.  The dwelling was built by George A. Crawley in the Carolean Revival style of architecture.  

John Phipps died in 1958 and in 1961 his children ordered Casa Bendita to be razed and the property to be subdivided. 

With the estate was the Casa Bendita Gazebo built in 1921 which has been demolished though it was rebuilt by Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach and is now located in  Bradley Park.  The original gazebo was one of the last links to the fabled John S. Phipps estate.  

The new Casa Benita Gazebo 

in memory of the gazebo on the John S. Phipps' Palm Beach estate.

Bradley Park

Palm Beach, Florida 

 

Legendary architect Addison Mizner created the "Palm Beach look" and much of Florida's architectural style today. 

Addison Cairns Mizner

(1872-1933

Addison Mizner was born in Benicia, California and died in Palm Beach, Florida.

He was an American architect whose Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style interpretations changed the character of South Florida, where the style is continued by architects and land developers.  During the 1920s Mizner was perhaps the best-known living American architect.  Palm Beach, Florida, which he "transformed" was his home and most of his designed homes are there.  He believed architecture should also include interior and garden design.

Addison Mizner's vision in the 1920s was instrumental in shaping another Florida city, Boca Raton.  He shaped it into a grand resort city inspired by the mediterranean and Moorish styles.  Although his grand development project was halted by the Florida land boom collapse and a hurricane, his architectural influence remains evident in structures like the Boca Raton Resort & Club and the city's Mediterranean Revival architecture. 

Addison Mizner was known as a "society architect" designing lavish estates and buildings for the wealthy in Palm Beach before turning his attention to Boca Raton. He popularized a style blending a Spanish, Italian and Central American architectural elements which became the defiining aesthetic for both Palm Beach and Boca Raton. 

Mizner envisioned Boca Raton as a luxurious resort city with canals, gondolas, a grand hotel and elegant homes connected by a Royal Highway. In 1925, Mizner and his brother Wilson established the Mizner Development Corporation with substantial financial backing. He bought ast acreage to create a playground for the wealthy, beginning construction on the Cloister Inn which would evolve into the Boca Raton Resort & Club. Key constructions included the Administration Building (now City Hall).

Boca Raton, an unincorporated small farming town that was established in 1896 became the site of Mizner's most famous development project. 

Notable works were The Everglades Club and President John F Kennedy's "La Querida" in Palm Beach.   

The Everglades Club

356 Worth Avenue

Palm Beach, Florida 

The Everglades Club is an exclusive, historic private club designed by Addison Mizner founded in 1919. It was Mizner's first Florida commission.  Originally planned as a hospital called the Touchstone Convalescent Club it was used to serve wounded soldiers during WWI.  The original complex included the main building, eight villas, tennis courts, a yacht basin and a golf course. It was later transformed into a social and athletic club by Paris Singer, the heir to the Singer Sewing Machine Company fortune.  The Club is known for its Mediterranean-inspired architecture, its golf and tennis facilities. The Club quickly became a central institution for Palm Beach society, hosting high-profile members and events. 

The Everglades Club is an exclusive club that is drenched in secrecy.  Cell phones are prohibited and members are rarely publicly identified.  The Everglades Club has been the pre-eminent social club in Palm Beach since the early 1900s with rumored members including presidents, politicians and titans of industry. The estimated initiation cost is $100,000+ including annual dues. 

The Everglades Club was designated a landmark in 1980. 

La Querida

1095 North Ocean Boulevard

Palm Beach, Florida

Circa 1965

Completed in 1923, the former Kennedy estate was built in the Mediterranean Revival style by well-known architect Addison Mizner at a cost of $50,000.  The home is most notable for serving as the "Winter White House" during the presidency of John F. Kennedy.  As of 2015, La Querida ("the dear one") contains over 15,000 sq. ft. of living space, including eleven bedrooms, twelve bathrooms and three half-bathrooms.  La Querida has been owned by a few other notable individuals since the Kennedy family sold the property in 1995 including businessman John K. Castle and real estate investor, Jane Goldman.  The currents owners are Carl (founder of Panattoni Development Company) and Mary Jane Panattoni who purchased the home in June 2020 for $70 million. 

El Mirasol

348 North Ocean Boulevard

Palm Beach, Florida 

Circa 1920

"Where parties bloomed like sunflowers".

Addison Mizner designed the 40-room El Mirasol ("The Sunflower") completed in 1919 for investment banker Edward Townsend Stotesbury, head of the town's most notable family of the time.  Stotesbury's second wife, Lucretia (Eva) Roberts Cromwell (1865-1946) was the one who convinced her husband to hire Mizner.  She added on to the mansion several times to accommodate 1,200 guests.  The estate required about 40 butlers, chambermaids, parlormaids, cooks, gardeners and housemen to keep the estate running on a full-time basis.  

Edward Townsend Stotesbury

(1849-1938)

The estate extended from the intracoastal waterway to the ocean on 42 acres. The grounds included a guest house, a 40-car garage, a Moorish-style tea house on the lake side, an auditorium, a tropical-bird aviary and a private zoo with monkeys, a "chicken run" which provided "daily fresh eggs and broilers" plus groves of citrus trees.

Sadly, El Mirasol was sold to developers and demolished in 1959 as it was the first historically grand Mediterranean Revival mansion to be built in Palm Beach though its large size and grounds were no longer viable for modern use. 

After the El Mirasol mansion was demolished in 1959, the large estate was divided and replatted for several homes called El Mirasol Estates. A tiled entrance arch and a fountain are the only remaining physical reminders of the mansion's original grandeur. 

The picnic sequence in the W. C. Fields silent film It's the Old Army Game (1926) was shot on the lawn of the mansion.  El Mirasol will always represent a significant part of Palm Beach's Gilded Age history. 

*Eva was the first mother-in-law of Doris Duke, "the richest little girl in the world".  When Stotesbury died in 1938, his $100 million fortune had dwindled to just $4 million, but Eva's astute ability to manage money allowed her to retain all of their homes, though many of their staff had to be laid off.  In  1922, Eva's daughter, Louise Cromwell, married General Douglas MacArthur in El Mirasol's living room.  Later, her son, James Henry Roberts Cromwell (1896-1990) became Doris Duke's first husband. 

Addison Mizner built the Palm Beach estate known as El Solano. It was called El Solano or "the east wind" after the hot, oppressive wind which blows off the Mediterranean sea in eastern Spain, but also for Solano County, California, Mizner's birthplace.  It is known today as an historic landmark, originally built in 1923 for Joshua Cosden, an oil magnate  and later owned by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980. The estate was granted landmark protection in 1980, preserving its architectural significance.  

Mizner's personal residence and architectural studio was Villa Mizner.  It was located within the Via Mizner, a charming shopping lane Mizner designed. 

Via Mizner is an historic site and is located at 337-339 Worth Avenue.  On April 1, 1993 it was aded to the National Register of Historic Places. Via Mizner houses twenty well-known shops and businesses as well as a small number of residential apartments.  The most famed address is 1 Via Mizner, the architect's own majestic five-story, tower-like residence called Villa Mizner.  Mizner designed the top floor as a single room which he used as his office.  Sixteen windows span the four sides of his office-floor and overlook the entrie island of Palm Beach.  Mizner's pet monkey, Johnny Brown, is buried at the foot of the home's 35-by-40 living room. Via Mizner remains today exactly as Addison Mizner envisioned it to be. 

 

Casa Amado

455 North County Road

Palm Beach, Florida 

Amado means "beloved"

The home was featured in the November 2014 issue of the Architectural Digest.

Addison Mizner built Casa Amado for Charles Alexander Munn, a social arbiter known as "Mr. Palm Beach".  The 23,000-square-foot property remained in the Munn family until 2000.  In 1919, Charles built Casa Amado where he lived with his wife, Mary and their four children and twenty servants.  His brother built a home next door which made these homes the second and third homes designed by Mizner.  Charles was a founder of the Everglades Club and among the first officers and owners of the Gulf Stream club.  He also helped to found the Seminole Club and the Poinciana Club of Palm Beach. 

Charles, his siblings and children intermarried with some of the oldest, wealthiest and most socially connected American families of the twentieth century such as Wanamaker,  Pulitzer and Kellogg.  

Charles Alexander Munn, Sr.

Munn was tagged by others as "Mr. Palm Beach", "The Grand Seigneur" of Palm Beach and "The Last Gentleman".  He consistently appeared on best-dressed lists and is credited with popularizing the official uniform of the social set:  blue blazer, ascot and flannel trousers.  When Munn died many family papers and photographs including the guest register from Amado's legendary parties were donated to the Historical Society of Palm Beach County where Charles was a member of the Advisory Board.

Pucker Up

Amado's storied guestbook is the ultimate kiss and tell page turner!

A 1941 spread of names from the Amado guestbook records not only the signatures of its visiting guests, but also their preferred shade of lipstick! At the top left corner is the name, Millicent Hearst (1882-1974).  She was the wife of media tycoon, William Randolph Hearst.  Millicent Veronica Willson Hearst was a vaudeville performer in New York City whom Hearst admired and married in 1903. They were married from 1903-1951.  

Specifically, a 1937 New York Times article notes that Charles a. Munn hosted a dinner party in Palm Beach where his guests included "Mr. and Mrs. William Randolph Hearst".

Mary and Charles divorced in 1930, but he continued the house parties without her and Amado's 80-page guestbook endures as a treasure.  Inscribed by 20th-century tycoons, aristocrats and fourth wives with boldface signatures and cupid's bow lipstick imprints, it is the ultimate kiss-and-tell page turner of guestbooks. 

Pages of signatures including those of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (top left column) from a visit in April 1941.

Rose Kennedy's lip print (bottom left corner).

  🎉  inside the party palace 🎉 

Mizner proclaimed the Spanish Revival style in the region in the 1920s.  Palm Springs may have midcentury modern, but Palm Beach has Mizner Mediterranean.  The charismatic Addison Mizner was one of the most famous architects in America in the 1920s.  Though he was not formally educatedin architecture, Mizner trained under Willis Jefferson Polk, the San Francisco designer who oversaw the construction of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and the 1915 World's Fair before moving to New York where he mingled with the wealthy.  

The apex of Mizner's career wouldn't begin until 1918 when he visited the town of Palm Beach for his health at the suggestion of his friend, Paris Singer.  Until his arrival, the buildings of South Florida were simply pastel versions of wooden structures found in the North.  Not one to fit into the mold, Mizner started designing buildings in the Spanish style, based on nis experiences in Spain and in Latin America. 

 

The Cloister at Sea Island was built in 1928 by automobile magnate Howard Earle Coffin, who envisioned it as a luxurious, yet laid-back resort, designed by architect Addison Mizner in a Spanish-Revival style whose previous work on other luxurious properties in Palm Beach, Florida helped establish the Spanish-Revival architecture that defines The Cloister.  Despite local skepticism about the "swampy, mosquito-infested" land, The Cloister was an immediate success attracting guests from the entire Eastern seaboard. The hotel gained national attention when President Calvin Coolidge visited in December 1928. 

Despite initial doubts about the location, the hotel quickly became a popular destination, hosting numerous dignitaries and U.S. Presidents having hosted the G8 Summit in 2004.  It has undergone significant redevelopment, including a $350 million rebuild in 2006 and continues to operate as a Forbes Five-Star hotel known for its authentic Southern hospitality.

In 1926, Automobile magnate Howard Coffin purchased Sea Island, intending to develop it into a vacation spot.  In 1928, Coffin, along with Bill Jones, opened The Cloister, initially as a modest inn.

Howard Earle Coffin

(1873-1937)

Coffin was an American automobile engineer and industrialist.  He was one of the founders of the Hudson Motor Car Company with Roy D. Chapin on May 25 1909. He retired from the Hudson Motor Car Company in 1930 though acted as a consultant.

On July 4, 1954 the Hudson Motor Car Company ended its car production though many fine vehicles were produced and came off its assembly line.

 

Rehoboth Beach is a popular coastal town in Delaware on the Atlantic Ocean in eastern Sussex County known for its boardwalk*, beaches and family-friendly attractions.  It's a vibrant community with a mix of tax-free shopping, diverse dining options and outdoor activities such as biking and hiking in nearby state parks.  Often called the "Nation's Summer Capital" it attracts visitors from nearby areas and beyond, offering a lively atmosphere with historic charm.

*The boardwalk, now a mile long, was originally built in 1873 on high ground between the beach and Surf Avenue which ran the full length of the oceanfront.  Many storms have changed the boardwalk's configuration over the years.  In 1914, a storm destroyed the boardwalk, pier and pavilions.  Surf Avenue was washed out.  In 1992, the boardwalk was again substantially destroyed by a January nor'easter.  It was rebuilt in time for the summer season. 

Dolle's Candyland was established in Rehoboth Beach in 1926.  It moved to its present location at the corner of Rehoboth Avenue and the Boardwalk in 1927 after the co-founders Thomas Pachides and Rudolph William Dolle (1893-1968) purchased the old YMCA building for the princely sum of $30,000.  It was here the legendary candy store was born.  From then until now, this landmark truly hand makes all their candies and chocolates. 

Taffy Original Flavors:  vanilla, peanut-butter, chocolate, peppermint, spearmint, strawberry, lemon, lime, orange, blueberry, licorice and banana.

Taffy Additional Flavors:  mango, watermelon, raspberry, coffee, pina colada, green apple, molasses, cotton candy, root beer, chocolate peanut-butter, wild cherry, pineapple and grape. 

The most popular salt water taffy flavor is vanilla, cotton candy and banana.

Boardwalk by Midnight

Images of America

Written by Anna Dolle Bushnell, who continues her family tradition with over 200 photographs of Dolle's 110 year existence on the boardwalk of Ocean City, Maryland and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  A fourth-generation family member tells the full story of this beloved business, from its humble beginnings in 1910 to its status as a seaside institution.  This book is a sweet trip down memory lane for anyone who has ever tasted a piece of Dolle's famous candies. 

Each copy will be signed; however, if you'd like your book to be personalized further, please include your request in the "comments" section of your order.

https://share.google/MoaoiGvfsQDJV26oN

 

The Original Brown Derby 

Built in 1936

Photo Circa 1956

3427 Wilshire Boulevard

Los Angeles, California 

The Brown Derby was a chain of restaurants in Los Angeles.  The first and best known was shaped like a derby hat, an iconic image that became synonymous with the Golden Age of Hollywood.  It was opened by Wilson Mizner in 1926.  The chain was started by Robert H. Cobb and Herbert K. Somborn (a former husband of film star Gloria Swanson) in the 1920s.  

The original Brown Derby opened February 1926.  Novelty architecture was in vogue and the restaurant was designed to catch the eye of passing motorists.  It was founded by Wilson Mizner (brother to Addison Mizner) as a small cafe across the street from the Hollywood hot spot, the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel.  Wilson was the front man and sat in both #50 almost every day.   Somborn owned the property and Jack L. Warner put up the money.  Warner was president and the driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.  

The origin of the Cobb salad is a subject of much debate, but it is widely believed to have been created by Robert H. Cobb, the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant in 1937 along with theatre magnate, Sid Grauman to satisfy a late-night urge for a snack. Legend has it that one evening, after a long day, Cobb wandered into his restaurant's kitchen at midnight, hungry and looking for a quick bite which was a way to use up his leftovers such as lettuce, bacon, eggs, avocado and tossing them with a house-made French dressing. It became a staple and the rest is history!  Though there are several variations of the Cobb salad, the Hollywood Brown Derby way is to finely chop all the ingredients, likely making this the original chopped salad.  The dressing is called "French dressing", but really its a simple vinaigrette.

The Brown Derby is famous for its walls of caricatures of famous stars who ate there in the heyday.  If you are a foodie and appreciate even just a little history, make sure you try The Hollywood Brown Derby next time you're in Orlando.  

The Hollywood Brown Derby

351 S. Studio Drive

Lake Buena Vista, Florida 

(inside Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Resort)

The Derby cocktail comes with a glow cube you take home!

Museum of Neon Art

216 S. Brand Blvd.

Glendale, California

The original Brown Derby sign is now housed at the Museum of Neon Art. Younger generations might not be familiar with the sign's full importance, but its presence at MONA ensures its legacy continues.  MONA currently holds 250 signs and exhibits 28 electrified signs in the "Neon Boneyard".

Another famous neon sign at MONA once appeared at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.