As the twentieth century rolled along, so did the railroad into Florida. The Gilded Age in America saw the emergence of magnificent homes along its waterfronts for the leisure moments of the robber barons, so called because they amassed huge fortunes monopolizing growing industry in this country and abroad, non more so than Henry Flagler. He realized, as we also found out by experience, the further south you go on the Florida peninsula, the warmer it gets in the winter months, and if people were to get there, they needed a mood of transportation. Flagler built the railroad: first to St. Augustine; then to Palm Beach; next to Miami; and finally all the way down the keys.
He wasn’t just trying to be helpful, for every mile of rail he installed, he received 8,000 acres of land from the government. Already very wealthy from his partnership with John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil, he came to Florida, in 1881, for the health of his ailing wife, and after her death he pursued the development of Florida’s east coast. He married his wife’s nurse, who unfortunately developed a mental health problem. He divorced her, and then married his third wife.
For a wedding gift, he gave her Whitehall, a splendid mansion he had built for her in Palm Beach, his newest resort town along the Atlantic Coast and Lake Worth. The 4,400 square foot grand hall, decorated with seven varieties of marble, reflected the finest royal palaces in Europe. The wealthy in America, at that time, saw themselves as the culmination of 3,000 years of western civilization, and attempted to live up to that image.
We could have waited for a tour with a tour guide or follow a tour pamphlet on our own. We chose to go by ourselves. The mansion was designed around a huge central courtyard. Cast plaster and fabric were used in the ceiling of the library to look like wood beams with leather insets. A 1,249 pipe organ was installed in the Music Room. The courtyard was designed around a statue of Venus; Carrere and Hastings, who brought their considerable abilities from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, designed the structure. Only the finest art, sculpture and furnishings from all over the world were used at Whitehall.
After Henry’s death, the mansion had a long history of being a hotel. Today, the hotel is gone and Whitehall is known as The Flagler Museum, opened to the public and offering a variety of special events.