Background
Addison Mizner was born in 1872 at Benicia, California, United States.
(Designed by noted architect Addison Mizner and completed ...)
Designed by noted architect Addison Mizner and completed in 1926, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on September 22, 1972.
(is a large resort and membership-based club located in Bo...)
is a large resort and membership-based club located in Boca Raton, Florida. Originally designed by California-born architect, Addison Mizner, it was intended to have been the second of two hotels, with the other an oceanfront hotel.
Addison Mizner was born in 1872 at Benicia, California, United States.
Becoming interested in the medieval art and architecture of Spain, the young man visited that country, attended classes at the University of Salamanca, and to complete his studies entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris.
During the late nineties Mr. Mizner returned to San Francisco, and for a few years served as draftsman in Willis Polk’s office, later moved to New York to start practice for himself. Ill health however prevented the continuance of his career there, and in 1916 he moved to Florida.
Opening an office at Palm Beach during the war he built a large Convalescent Hospital for French and British soldiers, a building of Spanish Colonial style, which became the medium of design in all Mizner's later work. After the Armistice the Hospital became the property of the Everglades Club, and with the start of the post-war building boom, his spectacular career got under way. For New York's society leaders wintering in Florida’s balmier climate he planned and built huge estates on the so-called “Riviera” of the south, where the Stotesbury estate was but one of the several said to have cost more than a million dollars. His next venture was to organize a Development Company, and in 1925 he laid out and began building the resort city of Boca Raton, some twenty miles south of Palm Beach, and when the Ritz Carlton Cloisters was opened the following year, over two hundred and fifty houses were under construction. While Mr. Mizner worked mainly in southern Florida he also prepared plans for the Riverside Baptist Church in Jacksonville and various buildings in other cities.
During 1926 the business recession in the east was felt in Florida, but he carried on his work for two more years before closing his office and retiring to his home at Palm Beach, where his death occured. Mr. Mizner is often accredited with having introduced the Spanish Renaissance style of architecture into Florida, but the fact remains that as early as 1887 the New York firm of Carrere & Hastings designed in the same style two hotels and a church at St. Augustine built for Henry Flagler, a real estate promoter in the state
