FLAGLER MUSEUM
Whitehall's Two-Year Restoration Captures The Grandeur Of The Original 1902 Estate

ABOVE: Whitehall's symmetrical architecture references Neoclassic styling. The museum's recent two-year restoration project returned the Gilded Age estate to its original glory.

pon its unveiling in 1902, Whitehall was heralded as "more wonderful than any palace in Europe, grander and more magnificent than any other private dwelling in the world."

Today, after the completion of an extensive two-year restoration, the same can be said once again about the Gilded Age estate in Palm Beach, which Henry Morrison Flagler built as a wedding present for his third wife, Mary Lily. It's the first time Whitehall has been restored inside and out since it was built more than a century ago.

A feat of American innovation during its time, Whitehall was constructed over an 18-month period — though its exquisite craftsmanship and decoration would suggest otherwise. Designed by Beaux-Arts architects John Carrére and Thomas Hastings, the 55-room mansion married 20th-century technology with Western culture. "Europeans admired American technological and scientific innovations but decried their lack of culture and arts," Executive Director John Blades says. "Whitehall was intended to communicate that Americans could merge great architecture with modem innovations."

ABOVE: The Grand Hall features seven varieties of marble and three ceiling paintings depicting the "Crowning of Knowledge," "Happiness" and "Prosperity" by Benvenuti. BELOW: The Louis XV-style Grand Ballroom was once the site of the Bal Poudré - the highlight of the season during Whitehall's heyday, according to Sandra Barghini, the museum's chief curator.

To this end, Flagler, who was known for his love of technology, added indoor plumbing and lighting, electricity, telephones, and central heating to the design — rare amenities in that era.

Built as a winter retreat for the Flaglers, Whitehall was also a seasonal resort for many Gilded Age barons from 1903 to 1917. "Whitehall's Bal Poudré, held on Washington's Birthday, was the highlight of the season," Chief Curator Sandra Barghini says. "Its 14 guestrooms, decorated in the Victorian-style of the day by Pottier & Stymus (the most fashionable decorators in New York), were always full."

Flagler died in 1913, and after the passing of Mary Lily in 1917, Whitehall was left to Mary Lily's niece. She sold it in 1925, and soon after, it reopened as the Whitehall Hotel. For the next 10 years, the original structure became a shadow of its former self as many of its contents were given away or sold.

So when Flagler's granddaughter, Jean Flagler Matthews, purchased the building and founded the Flagler Museum in 1959, few of the original art and furnishings remained. Over the decades, Florida's heat, humidity and insects wreaked havoc, threatening to destroy the treasured monument's modern-day innovations.

Hope of restoring the historic monurnent to its original grandeur, however, was never lost. Blades, who was a former staff member at Hearst Castle, formed a comprehensive plan to ensure Whitehall's future as a national historic landmark.

"Our first step in the two-year, $5 million restoration program was the installation of a state-of-the-art climate control system to keep humidity at 55 percent," Blades says. Thankfully, Flagler's foresight in installing central heating allowed for retrofitting of the system. ...continued

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