Latest news with #AddisonMizner
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The lasting legacy of architect and planner Addison Mizner on the city of Boca Raton
Editor's Note: As the city of Boca Raton celebrates its 100th anniversary of incorporation in May 1925, we look back at how it all started. This story originally ran in the Palm Beach Daily News in December 2024. By the mid-1920s, California-born architect Addison Mizner had established what would turn out to be his lasting legacy in the town of Palm Beach, having sparked a mania for houses, mansions and other buildings influenced by the architecture of Spain, Italy and Central America, yet bearing his own distinctive and sometimes flamboyant stamp. With his reputation established, Mizner looked south about 30 miles — to the coastal farming settlement of Boca Raton — with a vision that could only be described as grand. He would design and build a resort city from the ground up, taking his architectural cues from Venice and Moorish Spain. As he envisioned it, homes and a luxury hotel would be connected by a grand canal — complete with gondolas and gondoliers — as well as El Camino Real, described in promotional materials as 'The Royal Highway of Boca Raton.' It was 1925, at the height of Florida's soon-to-bust land boom, when Mizner and a group of financial backers founded Mizner Development Corp. to create that dream of a town on 1,600 acres along the Intracoastal Waterway. The city would also have 2 miles of oceanfront. The investors in Mizner Development Corp. included Paris Singer, the Singer Sewing Machine heir, who had given Mizner his first Palm Beach commission in 1918 to design the building that became The Everglades Club. Mizner's dream for Boca Raton would ultimately implode, smashed in 1926 by Florida's land bust driven by a frenzy of speculation as well as a devastating hurricane. By 1927, Mizner was bankrupt. By 1933, he was dead, at age 60. But in May 1925, when Boca Raton was incorporated, the newly formed Town Council was heartily embracing Mizner's vision, which was nothing short of captivating — an Old World-style oasis that would somehow capture the excitement of the Roaring Twenties. Mizner threw himself into the Boca Raton project with gusto. 'It is my soul, my heart, my pride to which I shall give my all," he told the Miami News at the time. "If it is not made the most beautiful place in all the world, it will not be for want of trying.' To celebrate the city's centennial, the Boca Raton Historical Society's exhibit 'Boca Raton 1925-2025: Addison Mizner's Legacy' is running through May 30 at The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum on Federal Highway. The multimedia exhibit highlights Boca Raton's past century of development, beginning with Mizner's early contributions and tracing his lasting influence. On view are photographs, drawings, maps and videos, along with historic artifacts and furnishings associated with Mizner. There are still architectural remnants of Mizner's dream standing in Boca Raton, including parts of the design for the historic City Hall building, which houses the museum, and homes in the Old Floresta and Spanish Village residential neighborhoods. Just as important was Mizner's original hotel building, which debuted as The Ritz-Carlton Cloister but today is part of the much larger luxury resort known simply as The Boca Raton. The 1,000-room resort and private club is the main sponsor of the exhibit. Historian Augustus Mayhew, who served as guest curator for the exhibit, told the Palm Beach Daily News the opening of the Ritz-Carlton Cloister, often referred to as The Cloister Inn, was a milestone for Mizner and his investors. Yet by the summer of 1926, after less than a year, Mizner's experiment in urban planning came to a shocking end when high-profile board members withdrew their support, leaving Mizner in horrific financial distress. As he researched the exhibit, Mayhew said, he was struck by the lasting effects of the project's failure on Mizner's reputation as a businessman. 'Although in later years Mizner and his brother Wilson were often caricatured as con men, fraudsters and thieves, I was surprised to discover that Mizner, Boca Raton's official city planner and major architect — the man who conceived and operated Palm Beach County's largest business during the 1920s — had very little if anything to do with money or any of the financial aspects of the Mizner Development Corporation,' said Mayhew. 'He was too focused on his T-square to ever look at the bottom line.' The exhibit is on view 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday at the museum, 71 N. Federal Highway, through May 30. Admission is $12 for adults; and $8 for seniors 65 and older and students 5 and older. For more information, call 561-395-6766 or visit Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Boca Raton history: Addison Mizner's influence on 1925 incorporation
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Happy Mother's Day: Church built for a mom leaves a lasting legacy
If the magnificent building at the corner of Park and King Streets in Jacksonville, Florida, could speak, what a story it would have to tell. It was designed in 1925 and completed in 1926 by the famous architect, Addison Mizner, who is known as the most important individual in popularizing the Mediterranean Revival style in Florida during the boom years of the 1920's. He was instrumental in developing Boca Raton and transforming Palm Beach. The unique church building he designed combines ingredients of Romanesque, Byzantine, and Spanish church architecture and was considered by his contemporaries to be Mizner's masterpiece. While the architect himself was not particularly religious, his mother was devout, and he had promised her that he would one day design a church for her. When approached by the fledgling congregation who wondered how they would pay him if he said 'yes,' his stipulation was that they not pay him, as he wanted to design the church in the blessed memory of his mother, Ella Watson Mizner. Ella had six sons, one of whom was a Reverend, and a daughter, and spent most of her life in San Francisco. She lived her last three years in her son Addison's home in Port Washington, New York, where she died in his care on April 6, 1915. This magnificent building, Riverside Baptist Church, is on the National Register, and was my home church, the only church I knew growing up. Recently I attended a state-wide Cooperative Baptist Fellowship meeting there. I was not prepared for the flood of emotion I felt being in this beautiful and sacred place for a few days, a place that is foundational for me. The church membership has declined through the years, as is true of so many churches in America, and the upkeep of a large property by so few members has been a daunting task. But I was energized by the ways in which the current membership is looking to be the presence of Christ in its neighborhood in creative and redemptive ways. The pastor of Riverside Church, as it is now known, Rev. Adam Gray, a native of Jacksonville, is a gifted person of grace, who speaks with wisdom and eloquence, is musically talented, and a visionary. I feel grateful for the ways in which he is guiding his eager congregation to build on the rich history of this great church going forward. And when, in our concluding worship service for the recent conference, I heard the stunning beauty of the rare Skinner Organ, another leap of faith in purchasing and maintaining that the church bravely undertook in 1925, I felt a sense of relief that my home church was not only going to survive, but thrive. It stretched my heart in ways that I had not realized needing stretching, and I am grateful. As we come to Mother's Day, I think of the remarkable ways in which a successful architect, in keeping his promise to his beloved mother, has made a profound difference in the lives of so many. My own experience as a child growing up in this church was to admire the ways in which the mothers and other strong women of the church, while not always credited for the hard work they did, were responsible for the care of so much of our congregational life. From teaching, to encouraging, to cooking, to chaperoning, to landscaping, to decorating, to praying, to delivering flowers from worship, to visiting the sick, it was the mothers, or those women who mothered us, who kept the church alive and well. I remember to this day a song that we sang on Mother's Day each year at Riverside Baptist Church. As choirs, including children, youth, and adults, we processed down the aisle to open worship, singing, 'We offer thanks and praise to God, for our mothers whose devoted love, through all the changing years has been as faithful as the stars above.' While I understand now that this idealization of motherhood may place undue burden on mothers who have needs of their own to consider, or isolate women who are not able or do not chose to be mothers, or stigmatize those who had a mother who could not or would not be their best selves, it was a comfort to imagine such loving protection from my own mother and other mothers in the church in whom I found acceptance and encouragement. While I have known both precious joy and deep heartache and disappointment in the mothering of my own children, I have in recent years been blessed to act as a mother figure to several young adults whose lives I have been fortunate to touch. I have always admired those mothers who have found deep contentment in the role of mothering and have blessed their children with this singular priority. Like too many preacher's children, PKs as they are called, I know and regret that my priority was often the church. I thank God for the opportunity to try again with these dear young adults who allow me to love them, and with my grandchildren, whose love fills my heart. And what a joy to be reminded of my own dear mother, in the church where she and my father raised me, and all that she did not only to mother me, but also so many of the youth that adore her to this day. She worked in the nursery at Riverside for more than 40 years and in that time helped many children see the love of God in her tender care. Her sensitivity to little ones who were shy about being in the nursery was palpable. Her delight in having youth in her home on Sunday evenings for after-worship fellowship was an embarrassment to me as a teen, as she invited youth to work puzzles or to shell field peas, but the youth seemed to love it. Her encouragement of me always in whatever I wished to pursue and her guidance when she felt I was headed in the wrong direction is deeply appreciated as I as an aging adult realize all that she sacrificed for me and how much she loved me. This Mother's Day, I pray that we all will spend some time reflecting on the role of our mothers in our lives, with a gracious spirit of forgiveness and gratitude. And when necessary, apply that same spirit to our own lives as we seek to be encouragers of those we may still 'parent' in ways that bring encouragement to them and healing to us. Happy Mother's Day! The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship. This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Happy Mother's Day: Church built for a mom leaves a lasting legacy
