Social History
Social History• February 7, 2017

Mrs. Post’s Mar-a-Lago

Marjorie Merriweather Post liked to live large. Really large. The world knew the size of her fortune, the length of her yacht and the speed of her Vickers Viscount turboprop jet with a Rolls-Royce engine. ...

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America First: Howard Major at Palm Beach

Social History• January 12, 2017.
America First: Howard Major at Palm Beach Architect Howard Major was Palm Beach’s leading advocate for an American-based classical building style during the post-WW I boom when Spanish and Italian reproductions became commonplace. Foreshadowing today’s “America First” populist sentiment, Major believed a mix of Old World styles should never... READ MORE
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Aristocratic Artist: Albert Herter at Palm Beach

Social History• August 23, 2016.
Aristocratic Artist: Albert Herter at Palm Beach “Well, Albert Herter simply has no right to exist. To begin with, he was born to wealth and social position; he is handsome and attractive in manner, and he has exceptional talent. You see, his career knocks the props from under those accepted saws about the impetus of […]... READ MORE
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Otto Kahn’s Palm Beach

Social History• February 27, 2015.
At Palm Beach, where most everyone was a somebody at some time somewhere for something, prominent Jewish personalities are not customarily included in the telling of the resort’s history. By recounting their lives, it enriches our appreciation for the complex social order that once existed when notables like Otto Kahn made Palm Beach their re... READ MORE
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Palm Beach – 1937

Social History• March 17, 2013.
“Happy bedlam” wrote social columnist Nancy Randolph in describing the 1937 Palm Beach season at the same time pointing out to her Palm Beach Daily News readers of the prevailing conservative undercurrent: “The trouble is this colony remembers the resort’s supreme Silliest Seasons of 1928 and 1929 when the stratosphere was the limit and... READ MORE
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Palm Beach Social History

Social History• 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
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The polish, paradox, and paradise of Palm Beach

Social History• January 6, 2012.
Happy New Year! With results of the presidential Iowa caucus soon to be known and the outcome of the Town of Palm Beach’s caucus on Tuesday night a near certainty, given the three incumbent councilmen are unopposed, it should be reassuring to know Palm Beach and Dubuque have something in common. Nonetheless, anytime Palm Beach […]... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part V, 1938-1939

Social History• August 2, 2011.
Watch Hill – Middleburg – Palm Beach During the carefree summer of 1938 Watch Hill Beach Club and the Misquamicut Golf Club members sharpened their backhands and refined their putts, unsuspecting of the looming disaster from the late September hurricane that would devastate their idyllic resort. But however much the Great Hurricane of 1938, as ... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part IV, 1938

Social History• July 29, 2011.
Philadelphia-Palm Beach-Watch Hill cosmopolitan Ellen Glendinning Frazer focused her camera on the private lives of society’s most extraordinary personalities, making for an entertaining biographical chronicle of the faces and places often regarded as America’s social aristocracy. With her first husband Persifor Frazer III remarried and... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part III, 1935-1938, cont.

Social History• July 21, 2011.
January 1936 Arizona Biltmore Hotel, Scottsdale January 1936 Montecito February 1936 Arizona Inn, Tucson February 1936 Castle Hot Springs, Arizona Hacienda De La Osa Sasabe, Arizona November 1936 Hindenburg PALM BEACH February 1937 April 1937 Luncheon at the Wolcott Blairs April 1937 A night class in photography April 1937 Du Pont house party, Newt... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part III, 1935-1938

Social History• July 20, 2011.
Tea in Chestnut Hill with Mrs. Albert (Rebecca) Pancoast, mother-in-law of Joseph Widener, a weekend hunt at Gertrude “Gertie” Sanford Legendre’s Medway Plantation, cocktails and dinner with Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney and Kay Denckla at the Arizona Desert School, lunch with Amory and Dolly Carhart on Fishers ... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part II, 1931-1935, cont.

Social History• July 12, 2011.
Chicago, June 1933 In Chicago for a Garden Club meet and a party at Marion McKinlock’s, Ellen Frazer visited the International Exposition. Chestnut Hill, 1933-1935 Amidst the Wood, Field and Stream, 1934. January-March, 1935. El Paso, Tucson, Scottsdale, and Palm Springs. Before heading to Palm Beach in late March and April, Ellen Frazer and ... READ MORE
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Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part II, 1931-1935

Social History• June 10, 2011.
Philadelphia in Palm Beach: Part II, 1931-1935 In March New York Social Diary featured the first part of a series Philadelphia in Palm Beach: 1920-1931 adapted from Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway’s voluminous biographical scrapbook of photographs. For this next chapter, I perused the more than 3,000 images Ellen Frazer compiled in a six-volu... READ MORE

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