MIZNER, ADDISON 1872-1933

PALM BEACH ARCHITECT

Genius or Fraud?

Because of the extravagance of his vision and his connection with the Florida boom during the 1920s, Addison Mizner has been described both as a genius of American architecture and as one of architecture's great frauds. An early biographer quipped that his flamboyant Palm Beach "villas" embodied a "Bastard-Spanish-Moorish-Romanesque-Gothic-Renaissance-Bull-Market-Damn-the-Expense style." Yet his work was praised by such notable figures as Frank Lloyd Wright, skyscraper designer Harvey Wiley Corbett, and sculptor Jo Davidson. Whatever the final assessment of his work, Mizner undeniably embodied the ebullient, gaudy, expansive spirit of the decade.

Early Life

Mizner was born into a prominent California family who encouraged his youthful interest in drawing. A year in Guatemala, where his father served as an American diplomat, inspired Mizner's love for Spanish architecture and artifacts, a passion that was sharpened by a few months' residence at the University of Salamanca in Spain. Never much of a student, he avoided the usual avenue to architectural success in his time—the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris—and instead became an apprentice in 1893 with San Francisco architect Willis Polk. Soon running up substantial debts, Mizner fled San Francisco for Alaska, where he joined the Klondike gold rush with his younger brother, Wilson, who was just beginning his long career as con man and wit. Addison Mizner returned to San Francisco in 1899 and then embarked on a two-year voyage through the South Pacific, where he claimed to have worked as an artist in ivory and charcoal, an exporter of antiques, a coffin-handle salesman, a prize fighter, and a restorer of family portraits for Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani, who knighted him. In 1903 he co-authored, with Ethel Watts Mum-ford, The Cynic's Calendar, a collection of twisted aphorisms such as "Where there's a will, there's a lawsuit" and "A word to the wise is resented." The volume sold relatively well, and Mizner returned to San Francisco with the notion of becoming an importer of Guatemalan coffee so that he could marry a lumber heiress whose father had just died. The heiress committed suicide, and the coffee plan did not work out, but while in Guatemala Mizner bought vestments, tapestries, candlesticks, and even altars from impoverished churches—loot that he was able to sell to collectors for substantial sums.

New York

With his newfound fortune and the help of a childhood friend, Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, a star in the New York social scene, Mizner set himself up in 1904 as a society architect. Mrs. Oelrichs introduced him to Stanford White, the premier society architect, who sent small jobs his way. Mrs. Oelrichs also introduced him to other of her wealthy friends, who were charmed by Mizner's wit and his exotic history, which he amusingly and racily embroidered. The brief marriage of his brother Wilson to the much older widow of tycoon Charles T. Yerkes—a match lavishly covered by the newspapers—brought even further attention to the Mizner name. Between 1904 and 1917 Addison Mizner built a successful career as an architect who designed luxury homes in a variety of styles. His New York period ended when World War I slowed the construction of these homes and when a debilitating injury required that he find a warmer climate.

Arrival in Palm Beach

In January 1918 Mizner became the houseguest of Paris Singer, a wealthy heir to the sewing machine fortune and kingpin of Palm Beach society. Singer commissioned Mizner to design and construct a hospital-convalescent home for affluent American combat veterans, and Mizner responded with a brickand-stucco tile-roofed Spanish-style building surrounded by small, identically styled villas. The war ended in November 1918, and when the complex opened in January 1919 it was not as a hospital but instead as the exclusive Everglades Club. The Everglades Club quickly became the center of Palm Beach social life and the inspiration for dozens of Mizner-built mansions along the city's beachfront.

Palm Beach Style

Commissioned by the elite of Palm Beach—Stotesburys, Vanderbilts, Biddies, Dukes, Wanamakers—the huge "villas" featured red-tiled roofs and spectacular loggias (roofed, often glassed-in or screened-in galleries) that opened onto patios and gardens and views of the sea. These homes were furnished by Mizner with tapestries, woodwork, grillwork, and flooring from ancient homes and churches in Europe and Latin America or with replicas—tile, wrought iron, carved wood, stained glass, pottery, furniture—manufactured by Mizner Industries, which Mizner established for the purpose. It is said that he hired men in hobnail boots to trod on drying concrete steps or workers with hatchets and files to scar newly installed woodwork—thus investing new homes with an antique appearance. His intention was not to deceive his wealthy customers but instead to provide them with his own picturesque, romantic version of history. As he told a contemporary interviewer, "My houses are full of history. I can afford to have a great deal because I make it up." No doubt many of the most outrageous tales about his architectural practices—that he once forgot to include a door in the design of a boathouse and a staircase in the design of a multistory villa—- were self-created. He loved to repeat the story that when a client had asked to see the blue-prints for the house he had commissioned, Mizner had replied that they were not available because the house had not been built yet. First the completed house, then the plans, he suggested.

Boca Raton

In addition to the Everglades Club and private villas, Mizner also provided Palm Beach with commercial and public buildings—Spanish-style shops and offices with stone walkways, sheltering loggias, and attractive landscaping. During the fall of 1924 he seized the opportunity to design an entire Spanish-style city—Boca Raton—which would include mansions, moderately priced housing, a commercial district, polo fields and golf courses, extraordinarily wide main streets, and an extensive canal system featuring electric gondolas. Caught up in the frenzy of the Florida boom, Mizner hoped to attract investors of all sorts to his model city and, in turn, make his own fortune. Instead, despite frenzied building and promotion on his part, his project was doomed when the Florida realestate market collapsed entirely in the spring of 1926.

The Comedy Goes On

After the Boca Raton disaster Mizner continued to erect a few buildings in Palm Beach and elsewhere—The Cloister at Sea Island, Georgia, for example. However, his reputation and the popularity of his architectural style rapidly declined, although both have enjoyed something of a revival since the early 1980s, Mizner spent much time during his final years writing The Many Mizners (1932), an account of his life until 1915. He was able to maintain his lifestyle only with the help of affluent former clients who often paid his household bills. Yet Mizner seems not to have lost his shrewd, if eccentric, perspective on life. A telegram from Wilson Mizner exhorted him, only hours before his death: "Stop dying. Am trying to write comedy." Addison Mizner replied: "Am going to get well. The comedy goes on."