When we first started visiting our Florida family, they took us to this amazing home in Palm Beach. On our current trip, we decided to use one of our days to drive south and revisit Henry Flagler’s home that he built in 1902 as a wedding present for his new wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler. (He was 72 when they married.)
We’ll split our walk through the home into 2 posts: the first floor is highlighted in this post and the second floor, along with some history, is in the next one. If you’ve seen any of the Gilded Age shows popular on TV, this house will seem familiar.
Have you ever wondered why this city is called Palm Beach? We’ll talk about that at the end of the next post. The information in these 2 posts are from the brochure we were given as we started touring the museum with our headphones.
This home, called Whitehall, had 75 rooms and was a winter retreat for the couple. It was built during America’s Gilded Age, which lasted from the end of the Civil War to the 1929 Stock Market Crash. Automobiles, telephones, electric lights, indoor plumbing, and virtually everything we take for granted today came into being during this time.
The clock in the next picture is a late 19th century rosewood and gilt bronze rococo style clock with cabinetry. It still runs and chimes on the quarter-hour. We didn’t hear it though.
Here’s some highlights of Flagler’s life; he was an amazing man:
- 1844: As the son of a Presbyterian minister, Flagler left his home in Hopewell, New York, at age 14 to pursue his fortune in Ohio. He became successful in the grain industry and later founded a salt mining and production business.
- 1867: Flagler joined John D. Rockefeller and Samuel Andrews as a founding partner in the Standard Oil Company. With his legal mind, Flagler helped determine the form of the modern industrial corporation by establishing the business trust, making it possible to conduct business in many states from a single corporate office, something entirely new in the business world.
- 1878-1880: Flagler visited Florida’s northern cities of Jacksonville and St. Augustine, noting the lack of adequate transportation systems and hotel facilities. While he remained on the board of Standard Oil, Flagler gave up his day-to-day involvement in the corporation to pursue his interests in Florida.
- 1912: His Florida East Coast Railway, and the luxury hotels he built along the way, linked the entire east coast of Florida from Jacksonville to Key West. In so doing, Flagler established 200M acres of land for farms, schools, hospitals, churches, and a series of luxury hotels, including The Breakers, the wold-class oceanfront resort that is still the museum’s neighbor. Tourism became one of Florida’s leading industries and Palm Beach one of the world’s great winter resorts.
Florida owes so much to Henry Flagler.
We entered through the main entrance that’s at the bottom of the map and enjoyed the Grand Hall. We then turned left into the Library that was used as a reception area for guests and business associates. If you’re interested in styles, the library was decorated in the Italian Renaissance style.
In the next picture of the Music Room, I was intrigued by the bust in the corner.
Music was a popular form of entertainment during the Gilded Age. A resident organist was hired each season to play the 1249-pipe organ that’s at the end of the hall in the next picture.
Mrs. Flagler used this room for hosting bridge parties, serving afternoon tea, and holding meetings of the Fortnightly Club, a group of women who gathered for programs of lectures and musicales.
From the Music Room, we walked through the South Hall to see the Billiard Room (on the left) and the Grand Ballroom (on the right).
(A coffer in architecture is a series of sunken panels in the shape of a square, rectangle, or octagon in a ceiling, soffit or vault (Wikipedia). On the website houseofficecarpentry.com, I saw that this style can be used to create the illusion of a taller ceiling in an already tall room.)
Following dinner, gentlemen retired to the Billiard Room (women withdrew to the Drawing Room, which we’ll see later). Reflecting Gilded Age interest in sports, billiards became popular with men and most estates of this period included similar game rooms. The plaster ceiling incorporates panels painted to look like zebra oak, popular at the time. The style is Gothic Revival.
From the Flagler Museum website: “Bals Poudré are literally powdered wig balls, and were popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both in America and in England.”
Newspapers called the party “the most brilliant social function in fair Florida’s history” and “one of the most sumptuous social affairs ever attempted south of Washington.”
important men of the era
A lecture series presented here in the ballroom highlighted the titans of industry and commerce during this time. Now we get to learn about them too. (Their names are italicized.)
“George Westinghouse was one of the most prolific inventors and businessmen of the Industrial Revolution. He funded more than 60 different companies employing 50,000 people and received 361 U.S. patents. He later fought the “Battle of the Currents” (AC vs DC) with Thomas Edison and won. Westinghouse, with his engineers, provided power and light for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His electric engines powered trains, and his air brakes stopped them. The AC system that Westinghouse built, coupled with Nikola Tesla’s AC motor designs, became the foundation for modern electrical power distribution. [His] scientific contributions forever changed the world.”
Thomas Edison: “With only three months of formal education, a curious and hardworking young man beat the odds and became on the of greatest inventors in history. Not only did he invent the phonograph and the first successful electric light bulb, he also established the first electrical power distribution company and laid the technological groundwork for today’s movies, telephones, and sound recording industry. The ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’ is a nickname often used to refer to Thomas Edison due to his groundbreaking work at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Through relentless tinkering, by trial and error, Thomas Alva Edison persevered – and changed the world.”
If you want to learn more about Thomas Edison and his laboratory at Menlo Park, our 2018 post from our time at Greenfield Village in Michigan is for you. This village is a do-again for us.
“Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He promoted the consumer revolution by producing a car affordable to the masses, while lamenting the moral toll exacted by consumerism. He believed in giving his workers a living wage, though he was entirely opposed to union labor.”
We found out more about Henry Ford’s contribution to Georgia on one of our early trips to Richmond Hills that is close to Savannah. Ford really gave back to the people where he lived.
“J.C. Penney, a fixture of suburban shopping malls, started out as a small-town Main Street store that fused its founder’s interests in agriculture, retail business, religion, and philanthropy.” The presenter brings “to light the little-known agrarian roots of an American department store chain and explore how the company, and their famous founder shaped rural America throughout the twentieth century [providing] a new perspective on this American cultural institution and its founder’s unique brand of American capitalism.”
“Remembered for his [Wanamaker department] store’s extravagant holiday decorations and displays, [John] Wanamaker built one of the largest retailing businesses in the world and helped to define the American retail shopping experience. From the freedom to browse without purchase and the institution of one price for all customers to generous return policies, he helped implement retailing conventions that continue to define American retail to this day. Wanamaker was also a leading Christian leader, participating in the major Protestant moral reform movements from his youth until his death in 1922.” Thank you for improving our shopping experience.
“Frank Winfield Woolworth was a classic self-made man who rose from an impoverished background to establish F.W. Woolworth and Company, which at one time was the world’s largest merchandising operation. He built a chain of stores around a merchandising tactic that was used by store owners in the years following the Civil War to clear out unwanted merchandise for a nickel. The low-priced goods displayed in his stores gave is [sic] customers the luxury of choosing from a wide array of merchandise.”
I’m so glad we had this chance to learn about the men from this era who transformed our shopping world. Now back to walking around Whitehall.
If you remember the map at the beginning of this post, the middle of the home/museum was an outdoor area known as the Courtyard, its style based on Classical tradition. This plan took advantage of the ocean breezes, which helped to keep the house cool in the Florida climate. Occasionally the Flaglers used this space for dinner parties.
The Grand Hall and the Grand Ballroom are on two ends of the courtyard. The other ends open up to hallways featuring the Music Room and the next two rooms: the Breakfast Room and the Dining Room.
Servants had direct access to the Breakfast Room through doors connecting the butler’s pantry and the kitchen area (that are no long part of the museum).
The Dining Room in the next picture was designed in the French Renaissance style, reminiscent of a royal hunting lodge. The Flaglers entertained large parties in this room for lengthy, elegant dinners.
Information from the museum’s website: “The Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, celebrating its 60th anniversary, is pleased to announce the return of the original ca. 1900 French Renaissance-style Dining Room furniture to Whitehall, the grand 100,000 square foot estate built by American businessman Henry Flagler in 1902. The dining table, 24 chairs, and two sideboards — the work of noted New York design firm Pottier and Stymus — are back on display in their original locations after a year-long conservation process, which began shortly after the furniture was purchased by the Museum in 2018.”
Flagler sometimes dined here with male associates from financial, literary, and legal circles. The rug was specially woven for the room and is recessed into the parquet floor. The wall coverings are green silk, reproduced from the original fabric.
Remember when we were in the Billiards Room that we mentioned that the female guests went to a different room after dinner?
The Drawing Room was used as a gathering place for music and conversation by Mary Lily and her female guests. The room is adorned with silk fabric and wood paneling decorated in the Louis XVI style [1754-1793]. Above each door and mirror is a cameo of Marie Antoinette, the ill-fated wife of Louis XVI, who was seen as an archetype of style and femininity by Gilded Age society women.
Aluminum leaf highlights the plaster ornaments in the Drawing Room. For much of the Gilded Age, the process of extracting aluminum economically had not yet been perfected and as a result, aluminum was more expensive and precious than gold.
The Drawing Room is in the corner of the house and could be entered by both the Dining Room and the Grand Hall. As we move between rooms, on the right is a portrait of Jean Flagler Matthews, Henry Flagler’s granddaughter and the founder of the museum.
the hotel era: 1925 – 1959
When Henry Flagler built Whitehall for his wife, he gave her its deed when it was completed in 1902.
They then set up a hotel operation and added a 12-story tower to the west side of the building overlooking Lake worth. Most of the objects from Whitehall were dispersed to family members or sold.
In 1925, the Whitehall Hotel demolished the original kitchen wing to build the hotel addition. (More about the kitchen at the end of this post.)
The formal rooms of the original house that we’ve just seen became public areas, while the original bedrooms on Whitehall’s second floor (next post) became the high-end guest accommodations.
By the mid-1950s, however, the hotel addition had fallen into disrepair and Whitehall stood in imminent danger of demolition as investors sought to redevelop the valuable land.
In 1959, when Henry Flagler’s granddaughter learned that Whitehall was threatened with demolition, she purchased the property and established the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum (where we are today). Eventually, most of the hotel tower addition was demolished, leaving only the first two floors for event space and Museum offices.
In 1960, Whitehall’s rebirth as the Flagler Museum was marked by a grand Restoration Ball. Since then, [it] has hosted more than four million visitors. In 2002, the Museum successfully completed a six-year campaign to restore Whitehall’s interiors and integrate state-of-the-art technology, such as climate control, to insure the long-term preservation of the building and its collection.
hotel addition
The original kitchen and butler’s pantry were located in this area. Adjoining these work spaces were the servants’ dining room and the housekeeper’s apartment.
Gilded Age social life required that many sets of china and service ware were needed for the family and guests. Each kind of social event, be it tea or dinner, required a special kind of service. An inventory taken at Mrs. Flagler’s death in 1917 listed more than 1000 plates, 500 glasses, 20 tea and chocolate sets, and 2 solid gold tea services.
Why was this telegraph cable so important? The effort took many tries, and nearly bankrupted the investors, but finally resulted in the completion of laying over 2000 miles of cable to depths of 2600 fathoms. The result was that Europe and the United States could communicate instantly.
The next post will take us upstairs to some guest rooms, 2 remaining servants’ rooms, the master bedroom and Mrs. Flagler’s morning room, a Flagler history room, and a lace exhibit.
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