Addison Mizner

Book excerpt: The work of the acclaimed designer of villas in Spanish, Moorish, Venetian, and Mediterranean style, in all-new color photography. The go-to architect for the Jazz Age elite of South Florida and beyond, Addison Mizner created a new architectural style and a new lifestyle for the wealthy and socially prominent of Palm Beach--America's preeminent winter resort town of the time. Building mansions, clubs, hotels and apartment houses with a bent toward fantasy and romance, Mizner established a design vocabulary and tradition that to this day influences architects, designers, and builders. Evocative of old Spain, Venice, and the Moorish capitals of Granada and Seville, Mizner's work is a dream realized: courtyards with fountains, trellises with climbing bougainvillea, arched windows, glazed tile floors, spiraling marble columns, expansive interiors with grand proportions. This book explores Mizner's legacy through the extraordinary houses and other structures he built, including such storied homes as La Guerida, an 11-bedroom Spanish Revival mansion, best known now as the Kennedy Estate--the place where JFK he composed his Inaugural Address. Known for their beauty, opulence, fantastic detail, as well as the stories of those individuals who have lived or played in them, the houses and buildings of Addison Mizner stand as monuments to grand living and romance made in stone and iron, stucco and tile.