Palm Beach
Palm Beach• March 24, 2014

Resort Life, Chapter XXXVIII: January 1970 – December 1970 Palm Beach + Boca Grande + Down East + Brittany + Ireland

On New Year’s Day 1970, maestro Leopold Stokowski was visiting Palm Beach. Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin was due for a vacation at The Breakers. Dina Merrill and Cliff Robertson were put up at Mar-a-Lago. Alvin and Lilly Fuller were ensconced in their new Chinese-style house with a ten-tier pagoda by the pool.  During the holidays, Carola and Leon Mandelseated thirty-eight for a formal dinner at their South Ocean […]...

READ MORE

RECENT POSTS

Read more

Resort Life, Chapter XXXIII: August – December 1967 Down East + Palm Beach + Naples + Virgin Islands

Palm Beach• January 14, 2014.
By 1967, Brooke Astor had already made a name for herself.  Following her short-lived five-and-one-half year marriage to Vincent Astor, and his ensuing death in 1959, she spent the next more than four decades dispensing as much as $200 million.  As head of the Astor Foundation, she became New York’s most generous godmother. Having transforme... READ MORE
Read more

Palm Beach Social Diary Remaking History: Paris Singer & the Everglades Club, 1918-1932

Palm Beach• November 1, 2013.
No matter how thorough Palm Beach’s past was documented, filtering fact from fiction can prove a daunting task to anyone interested in exploring the resort’s hybrid genre of reality. Time and again, social historians must rely on revised memoirs, third wives, feuds, after-dinner speakers, hearsay, and deadline items dashed off by Cholly Knicke... READ MORE
Read more

Palm Beach Social History

Palm Beach• January 3, 2013.
Our Palm Beach members want quick action and thrills, roulette and hazard. Card games are not thrilling.” –The Beach Club, Palm Beach, 1913. “ … Go to Palm Beach, which is not exclusive, but merry, sumptuous and expensive and where there is a chance to meet many prominent men in the gambling rooms …” –Advice […]... READ MORE
Read more

Philadelphia in Palm Beach, Part I

Palm Beach• September 3, 2011.
We are taking today off to continue to optimize the back end of the new site. In the meantime, please enjoy Part 1 of Augustus Mayhew’s series on Philadelphian Ellen Glendinning (first published on these pages in 2011), who kept an extensive diary where she recorded and photographed the life around her family and friends; a chronological scrapboo... READ MORE
Read more

Palm Beach Social Diary: Another Look at Lost Palm Beach

Palm Beach• January 3, 2010.
“We were so young and gay then and we thought we had all the money in the world. It will be sad if the great houses vanish and the Mizner period becomes only a memory and part of Palm Beach’s past rather than its present.” — Billie Burke Despite the heart-felt sentiment, many of the Mizner […]... READ MORE
Read more

Envisioning Palm Beach: The Addison Mizner Collection at The Society of the Four Arts

Palm Beach• August 26, 2009.
Architect Addison Mizner’s extensive library, volumes that span three centuries, and his design diaries — scrapbooks filled with sketches, watercolors, photographs and ephemera — are noteworthy aspects of the decorative arts collections at The Society of the Four Arts, reflecting Mizner’s influential status as a professional architect and... READ MORE
Read more

Garden Grandeur endures at Casa Phippsberger

Palm Beach• March 23, 2009.
In Palm Beach, where escapist landscapes borrowed from English rose gardens, French parterres, Spanish cloisters and Tuscan courtyards amplify the surreal allure of streets lined with imported architectural facades, Casa Phippsberger’s tropical splendor is a welcome relief, a six-acre sanctuary inspired by the barrier island’s own natural histo... READ MORE

Subscribe

FOLLOW US

Popular Posts

Read more
Social DiaryApr 13
Rainy Spring days in New York, a great dinner with a good friend I hadn’t seen in months, reminding me of a story of a book I’d never written.
Read More...
Read more
Social DiaryApr 12
Reflecting on the departure of Prince Philip: Finding out about the man whom I never knew personally, but came to know yesterday.
Read More...
Read more
Palm BeachApr 12
Augustus Mayhew reports on the Garden Club of Palm Beach reception that drew more than 200 for its inaugural outdoor flower show.
Read More...
Read more
Social DiaryApr 5
A holiday surprise from JH’s camera led me on a search for the memories it evoked in my life and our times.
Read More...
Read more
Palm BeachApr 4
All of Palm Beach took notice when James de Givenchy arrived at Sotheby's this past week.
Read More...