Palm Beach

Tuesday 5th January 2010

Today we explored a little of Palm Beach. Driving north, we stopped at a ‘municipal (public) beach’, the sun was shinning brightly but the wind was still cold. The beach was almost completely empty, possibly because of the cold, but very beautiful with the Atlantic a stunning blue.

Moving on, we looked at the outside of some very nice properties including one built for Marjorie Merriweather Post, a breakfast cereal heiress. Mar-a-Lago translates as Sea to Lake, which is exactly what this property does. The 118 room mansion, described as a ‘Moorish fantasy’, was eventually sold to Donald Trump in 1985 for $15 million. Mr Trump has turned this work of art into a private ‘social club’ with annual membership allegedly costing $100,000. All we could see from the road was the boundary wall and one tower!

Our next stop was a brief visit to ‘Bethesda–by-the-sea’ an Episcopalian church, which is a quaint little church with some very beautiful stained glass windows. The first church on this site was built in 1889 and was the first Protestant church in southeast Florida. The present Gothic structure was built in 1925. But the best part of it for me was the handsome cloistered garden.

The next stop on our driving tour was The Breakers Hotel.

Much to our surprise, we were welcome to go in and just have a look around the ground floor public areas. (Bedrooms range from $349 per night for a ‘Standard Superior’ room to $899 for an ‘Oceanfront’ room. Both only have one kingsize bed). Commissioned by Henry Flagler in the late 1800’s it has twice burnt down and the present masterpiece, rebuilt in 1927 by his heirs, was designed by Schultze, who also designed the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The Flagler Museum, a short distance away, was originally built by Flagler as a wedding gift to his third wife in the 1900's. 'Whitehall' cost him $2 million to build and $1.5 million to furnish but was used as a family residence for only six weeks of every year, from 2nd January to Washington’s birthday at the end of February; a retreat from the cold and harsh New York winter.

Flagler was a self made man and his first fortune was made in the grain industry. He invested this fortune in the purchase of a salt mine towards, what turned out to be, the end of the civil war; salt was in very great demand as a preservative during the civil war. Unfortunately his timing proved disastrous and he lost everything as both the demand for, and the price of, salt plummeted. Moving his family to Michigan, he happened to share office space, and became firm friends, with John D Rockefeller. Together they started The Standard Oil Company which is where they made their great fortunes, Flagler acting as company accountant.

On ‘retiring’ from his position within Standard Oil, Flagler built the East Line railroad, stretching from the north of Florida all the way south to Key West.
Before he became interested in the area, nearly half of Florida was swampland with the Everglades reaching as far North as just south of Orlando. His legacy has been the development of the state which has been so ‘successful’ that the Everglades now start just south of Miami. In fact, the popular idea voiced by the developers of Miami was to call the city ‘Flagler’, but Flagler, a modest man, did not wish it so.

To see more pictures of Palm Beach and the places we visited while we were here - Click Here