The Pleasures of Palm Beach

The Breakers credit: Graciela Cattarossi

Some say that when the spanish conquistador juan Ponce de León set sail for Florida in the early 1500s, he was looking for streets of gold and a fountain of youth. He found neither, but perhaps it was simply because he was a bit ahead of his time. Had he been around a few centuries later, when an explorer from Ohio by the name of Henry M. Flagler arrived in the same area, Ponce de León might have realized that what he was looking for had been waiting for him all along. But it was Flagler, in fact, who founded the Florida city whose modern streets might as well be paved in gold, providing — if not eternal youth itself — at least a taste of the ever invigorating life.

“I have found a veritable paradise,” wrote Flagler to his St. Augustine business associate in 1892, following a trip to the then far-flung hamlet of Palm Beach. Flagler had made a fortune in the 1870s as the cofounder of Standard Oil, along with John D. Rockefeller. His second career as a railroad and hotel builder in Florida began in Jacksonville and St. Augustine and inched its way down the largely unpopulated edge of the state, with Flagler always on the lookout for a promising site for yet another grand hotel (to which he would have to extend his railroad, there being no paved roads along the Florida coast at the time).

Flagler spurred on the efforts of his railroad crews and his hotel builders, promising a bonus to the men who finished first. The winners were the workers who completed the 540-room Royal Poinciana in the early spring of 1894, a scant nine months after they had begun. Guests who stayed in what was then the largest wooden structure in the world might pay $4 a day for a standard double, or as much as $100 for a special suite, at a time when laborers might earn $6 for a week’s work. But come and stay they did, in droves. Demand was so great that Flagler quickly commenced work on a second oceanfront hotel, which became known as the Breakers. The star-studded guest list there included the likes of the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Rockefellers, and many others on that list of lists known as “the Four Hundred” — and they have not stopped coming since.

“The social life of the western continent finds exclusive expression in Palm Beach, and the charm of Southern hospitality is to be found here,” gushed a promotional brochure of the 1930s. “It is estimated that in a single season representatives of four-fifths of the wealth in the United States are to be found living in the palatial homes, gorgeous hotels, or magnificent clubs of this community.” 

It was no exaggeration, then or now, for the beauty and the pleasures of the place have continued to draw a roll call of the world’s wealthiest and most notable: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Frank Sinatra, Celine Dion, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Aristotle Onassis, Luciano Pavarotti, and on and on. The Kennedy family established a vacation compound on the island, and other permanent residents have included Donald and Ivana Trump, who bought Marjorie Merriweather Post’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate, Jimmy Buffett, James Patterson, John Lennon, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Willis H. DuPont, and many more. The median income of the city’s some six thousand households places it first among American cities of its size, according to the most recent Census Bureau figures.

And yet, for all that — and in marked contrast to many other exclusive enclaves of the rich and famous — the pleasures of Palm Beach are accessible to just about anyone. While a stay at one of the island’s principal hotels — the Breakers (still there, commanding a stunning view of the ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway), the Chesterfield, the Colony, the Brazilian Court, the Four Seasons — may not be for the budget-minded, still, rates are surprisingly affordable, especially during the summer season, and the quality of the accommodations and the meticulous attention to detail offer anyone a taste of the finest (not to mention the chance to rub shoulders with movers and shakers and celebrities). And then there is that breathtaking beach, a broad, mile-long stretch of white wave-kissed sand that is open to anyone willing to struggle up from a chaise or a chair or a towel every couple of hours to plug a few more quarters into one of the meters along adjoining Ocean Boulevard. 

In many parts of the state, Floridians are wont to bemoan a “bulldoze and rebuild” attitude typical of latter-day developers treading in the wake of Flagler, but there is nothing to apologize for in this regard in Palm Beach. The array of homes that caps the dunes along A1A southward to the county line is as distinctive as any in the United States. The grounds of the most impressive, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago among them, span the breadth of the island, from ocean to lakeside, and, though you can’t tell, many include a subterranean passage beneath the intervening highway out to the private beach.

Also in the city are numerous examples of the work of Addison Mizner, the noted architect who came to Palm Beach in ill health in 1918, fully expecting to die. Perhaps it was the water that revived him; in any case, Mizner lived on another fifteen years, creating a number of homes, including the Kennedy compound, in a flamboyant Italian revival style that became the hallmark for any South Florida home of distinction built during the period.

Perhaps the city’s most impressive architectural specimen is Whitehall, the 55-room “marble palace” built by Henry Flagler as a wedding gift for his third wife, Mary Lily Kenan, in 1902. Mary Lily was only thirty-four at the time of the wedding, with Flagler seventy-one, and tongues wagged accordingly. But by all accounts the couple lived quite happily for the final eleven years of Flagler’s life, dividing their time between Palm Beach and St. Augustine, and, in summer, the Northeast, where they fled the heat.

Like most Florida destinations, Palm Beach has only two seasons: “in,” which might begin as early as Thanksgiving and run until Easter, and “out,” which includes the rest. Most of the grand homes sit empty during the summer months, but the hotels and the restaurants and the varied attractions remain open, offering bargains and elbow room to visitors from around the world. For year-round residents like writer David Ramus, author of Thief of Light, the summer is a boon. “There’s no traffic,” says Ramus. “And you can always get a good table for dinner.”