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.