The Phipps Family in Florida: A World of Their Own, Part 2 of 3
September 26, 2023
Heamaw, center, flanked by Casa Bendita and Los Incas, view east toward the ocean. North County Road, Palm Beach. [Aerial, Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]
Just as architect Francis Burrall Hoffman Jr. had conceived Vizcaya as a picturesque historical illusion modeled on Old-World classical grandeur for owner James Deering, he designed Heamaw and Villa Artemis as similar adaptations for Henry Carnegie Phipps and Amy Phipps Guest, introducing a new architectural paradigm for Palm Beach’s oceanfront.
Vizcaya, ground floor plan. F. Burrall Hoffman, architect. [Architectural Review, July 1917]
Highlighted by large interior courtyards enclosed by living areas and upper-story rooms opening onto walkways overlooking the central patio, both houses featured side entrances along southerly elevations allowing the principal rooms to have views of the ocean beyond. And yet, although Heamaw and Villa Artemis shared various stylistic features at their inception, their destinies were enormously disparate.
During Hal and Gladys Phipps’ lifetime, Heamaw was an architectural exemplar with fitting add-ons and flourishes by Addison Mizner and Treanor & Fatio. Following Gladys’ death in 1970, however, a new owner’s indifference to Heamaw’s provenance and disregard for its structural integrity resulted in the property’s abandonment. Subsequently, the house was defaced and vandalized with salvaged fragments scattered, some even carted to the Everglades and affixed to a Belle Glade office building. At the time, the house’s demolition was characterized a godsend, transformed into a subdivision — “Bamm-O. Bammity, Bamm-Bamm.” Since then, Heamaw has passed into oblivion without a trace that it was ever the site for a Palm Beach landmark designed by three of the past century’s most notable architects.
Although more than 40 years since the town’s Landmarks Preservation Commission was established and more than a century since Villa Artemis was built, it remains undesignated as a local or national historic landmark. The oversight is even more baffling considering Amy Phipps Guest’s leading role in some of the 20th-century’s major social and humanitarian causes. Nonetheless, it should not be surprising that Villa Artemis and several other significant architectural landmarks that might have been landmarked 40 years ago in other communities, remain undesignated on Palm Beach.
Heamaw 401 North County Road
No matter whether at their New York townhouse, Long Island estate, the Camp Chaleur fish camp, or the Florida beach house, Hal and Gladys Phipps could be found shuttling between the putting green and tennis court, the bridge table and the kennels, or saddling up on the polo field and at the racetrack. Considering their stellar Social Register standing, their every activity made news. In the months before construction began for their Palm Beach house, Hal, Gladys, and the dogs headed for the Everglades.
January 1916. “H C Phipps Will Hunt …” Tweets from the Everglades. [Miami News & Palm Bech Post]
During that spring and summer, Amy, Hal and Gladys, and Michael Grace made news as crowds gathered to watch the construction of Villa Artemis, Heamaw, and Los Incas, their new Palm Beach oceanfront mansions. Rather than informed too much by Whitehall, Henry Flagler’s Old Havana-styled, lakefront colossus, their three houses were inspired by the Italian villas that lined the Riviera del Brenta between Padua and Venice.
April 1916. “Two Millionaires Build Homes …” [Miami News]Francis Burrall Hoffman Jr., architect. Gladys’ mother Ruth Livingston Mills and Hoffman’s father were cousins. [Courtesy Lindley Hoffman].Music Room at Al Poniente. North Lake Trail, Palm Beach. F. Burrall Hoffman Jr., architect. Ceiling artist, Robin Winthrop Chanler. At Al Poniente, first known as the Cluett’s Bywater Lodge, Hoffman designed a 35-by-70-foot music room to set 100 guests, with rough plaster walls tinted white. Built as a fully equipped miniature theater for theatrical producer Joseph Riter, the stage slid beneath the organ floor when not in use. Following Riter’s death in 1928, Al Poniente was demolished. [Photo, F. E. Geisler, Architecture magazine]
“Perfect in design, magnificent in proportions.”
Heamaw, January 9-20, 1917. “Palatial Palm Beach homes…”Heamaw, east elevation, c. 1918. The earliest known image of Heamaw. The following year, a pair of loggias were added to the east elevation, opening onto terraces overlooking the ocean. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Heamaw (Seminole, “Come Here”). Main entrance. Francis Burrall Hoffman, architect. Additions and alterations by Addison Mizner and Treanor & Fatio. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Heamaw, interior central courtyard. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Heamaw and Los Incas. Heamaw’s tropical greenhouses were one of Palm Beach’s earliest state-certified nurseries, joined on the list several years later by Casa Bendita’s extensive plantings. [Sanborn Insurance Map, c. 1918-1919]The principal main entrances to Heamaw, pictured right, and Los Incas, shown left, faced each other, sharing a private road lined with Australian pines that ran from the Ocean Boulevard to County Road. To the left of Heamaw’s entrance is the Mizner wing added during the 1920s. [Aerial,Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]Hal Phipps’ hybridization of floriferous gardenias was of special note as was the gladiola patch for white peacocks to preen and Whitely, a Galapagos-sized tortoise to lounge. [Garden Cub of America, Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens]Heamaw, double staircase. “The Social Climb.” [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]
Family Matters
Gladys and Hal Phipps, c. 1910.
Hal and Gladys Phipps greeted 200 guests at their wedding reception held in 1907 at her family’s Livingston Manor, tallying more than $1 million in wedding gifts. After a several month honeymoon yachting in the West Indies, the couple popped-up at Palm Beach, registering at the Royal Poinciana Hotel in February 1908, much to the surprise of their friends. As Gladys took to the golf course, Hal headed to Jack Bradley’s Palm Beach Gun Club for the bird shoots.
Run-of-the Mills. Hal’s new mother-in-law Ruth Livingston Mills, pictured left, looking informal, was one of Newport’s persnickety social arbiters. Pictured right, Gladys’ brother, Ogden Mills, a US Secretary of the Treasury, was Gladys’ first partner in a thoroughbred horse venture called Wheatley Stables during the mid-1920s. Gladys’ grandfather Darius Ogden Mills had amassed a considerable fortune in California shortly after the 1849 Gold Rush. Her twin sister Beatrice was styled Countess Granardafter her marriage to the Earl of Granard. Gladys’ uncle, Whitelaw Reid, was US Ambassador to the Court of St. James.“Mrs. Mills Dies …” Proclaimed the “Leader of the 150,” Ruth Mills was determined to blue-pencil Mrs. Astor’s “400.”Spring Hill. Summer, 1908. Hal and Gladys paid $500,000 for the John Russell Pope-designed mansion on the Stow Estate located in Long Island’s Wheatley Hills, near Jay and Margarita’s Westbury House. [oldlongisland.com]Hal and Gladys Phipps with Ogden at the Everglades Cub golf course, c. 1920. Though tennis was young Ogden’s game, he would later follow in his mother’s steps, starting his own racing stable.“Between Chukkers.” Hal Phipps, 1914, pictured above, prepping for the US-Great Britain polo at Meadowbrook. Though described as a poloist, horse fancier, financier, and clubman, with a penchant for the diversions at Bradley’s Beach Club, Hal played a substantial role along with his brothers in the management and growth of Bessemer entities. In March 1914, he took his father’s board seat at US Steel.North Ocean Boulevard, 1920-1921. A rare view of “Phipps Row” with Casa Bendita and El Mirasol under construction, when North Ocean Boulevard, then Gulf Stream Boulevard, ran directly along the ocean. Following the 1928 hurricane, estate owners from Wells Road north to the Palm Beach Country Club successfully petitioned the town and the county to shut down the roadway and utilize what was then known as Palm Beach Avenue, later North County Road, as the major thoroughfare. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]In 1923, pictured left above, architect Addison Mizner designed a sizable addition, “Spanish with Moorish accents,” including a two-story, 60-by-30 living room with a 26 ft.-high ceiling, described as a ballroom, a library, additional guest bedrooms, a sun room-loggia, and a tiled roof. The following year, Heamaw was screened by “the highest hedge at the resort,” as towering Australian pines bordered the estate. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Heamaw, saltwater pool and pavilion. [Historical Society of Palm BeachCounty]
“First Lady of Turf”
What began for Gladys Phipps with a stable of less than a dozen yearlings from Payne and Helen Whitney’s Greentree Stable, a card game debt some say, would develop into one of the racing world’s most formidable racing stables, awarding her standing at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.
Early on, Gladys retained trainer James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons to manage and run Wheatley Stable, her nom de course, at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, under the watchful eye Arthur “Bull” Hancock (played by Fred Thompson in the film Secretariat). For four decades, Gladys was as familiar a presence in the stables as she was in the winner’s circle from Belmont to Hialeah Park. And while her yellow-and-purple silks often finished in the money, her most significant contributions to thoroughbred racing were thought to be her broodmares and sires.
Wheatley Stable first ran at Hialeah in 1928, the pre-Widener era when Florida’s anti-wagering laws did not permit bookmaking or betting. When Joseph Widener, E. R. Bradley, and the Munn brothers ushered in parimutuel betting at Hialeah in Jan 1931, Helen Whitney’s Greentree was the largest stable with 29 horses; Gladys’ Wheatley Stable saddled five. The following year, Greentree had 54 horses; Wheatley ran 25.
Gladys Phipps and her brother Ogden Mills with their latest winnings in the 1920s. Upon her brother’s death in 1937, her husband Hal became her partner. Her son Ogden organized his stable during the 1930s. [Courtesy Keeneland Library]Gladys Phipps with her daughter Audrey at Hialeah Park, 1933. Gladys Phipps with jockey Eddie Arcaro, Hialeah Park, 1950. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Left, Sonia Phipps; Right, Audrey Phipps and Barbara Phipps. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Gladys and Hal Phipps, Hialeah Park. Undeterred by the more prominent Bradley, Whitney, or Dodge-Sloane stables, Gladys persevered. she may have been best-known for breeding them. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Hal Phipps with his sister-in-law Lillian (Mrs. Ogden) Bostwick Phipps. Hialeah Park, 1939. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Henry Carnegie Phipps. Worth Avenue, Palm Beach. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]Gladys and son Ogden at the 1911 Mineola Fair racetrack and in 1941 at Belmont Park. A life at the races. [Morgan Collection]
Ogden Phipps shared his mother’s passion for thoroughbreds, registering his own silks during the mid-1930s, becoming longtime chairman of New York’s Jockey Club. Following E.R. Bradley’s death, his estate sold his Kentucky Derby-winning “gilded bloodstock” to Robert Kleberg, grandson of Richard King, founder of the 900,000-acre King Ranch, the Whitney’s Greentree Stable, and Ogden Phipps. After “drawing straws,” Phipps acquired five mares, four yearlings, and three sucklings.
“Aunt Gladys was not to be messed with. She was known to sort things out with a look and a short sentence,” observed a Phipps family member. “A wonderful lady in my book. from a lady who had the eyes of an eagle when it came to knowing how many times the jockey blinked on one of her horses. Actually, both my aunts, Amy and Gladys were definitely great in every way. They do not make them like that anymore!”
Heamaw and Casa Bendita. [Aerial,Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]
Heamaw: The Aftermath
Following Gladys’ death in October 1970, her estate sold the property for $625,000 to Philadelphian and former West Palm Beach resident Hannah Gertrude Hogan. “One of the most beautiful houses I’ve ever seen,” Hogan told The Palm Beach Post.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t.
Apparently, she had failed to secure the property, leaving the property open during the summer and fall months without a caretaker. According to Hogan, vandals trespassed and broke-in to the main house, “ripped it apart,” painted graffiti on every wall, and carted architectural fragments away “piece-by-piece.” The Town of Palm Beach Police Department blamed it on “children and teenagers.” Hard to believe, even in 1970s Palm Beach?
Suzy, first to know! [February 25, 1971]Heamaw, 1972. Exterior grand double staircase. The Phipps property was no longer recognizable as the architectural gem it was just a few years earlier. [Palm Beach Post archive]
Hogan announced she had to scrap plans to renovate the property because of “extensive vandalism” and set demolition for July 1972, seeking approval for her five-lot Chateaux Enchante subdivision. The Palm Beach Post opined that perhaps “the house was filled with ghosts” and the house was “torn apart and wounded, awaiting final destruction.”
“A World-Famous Estate Being Divided.” “I’m calling it Chateaux Enchante because it will be like a little spot in France,” Hogan said. [Palm Beach Post]
Nonetheless, while waiting to gain her zoning approvals, Hogan agreed to allow the defaced, ruined, empty house, with no water or electricity, to host an April benefit for the Junior Opera Guild. Remember, it is Palm Beach. The utilities were turned back on for a one-night-only and …
April 1972. “Swingin’ at the Palace.” 800 guests paid $10 each to benefit the Junior Opera Guild, enjoying a shameless Casino Night. Trink Wakeman was co-chair. Gregg Dodge Moran was honorary chair. “I bought the house to live in, but it is just too big,” Hogan said to anyone who would listen. “I’d hate to see it torn down. You can buy it for $1.2 million. That’s just for the house and a bit of land …” [Palm Beach Post archive]
The last rites were administered by the Big Chief Wrecking Company, as cypress ceilings, marble fireplaces, glass doorknobs, cast stone balustrades, and carved moldings were chiseled and hammered, then tied-down and hauled away in pick-up trucks. “Tortured months of being pulled apart by salvage hunters and vandals,” was coming to an end.
“Lower the Ceiling.” Even a Palm Beach Post writer carted away a priceless cypress ceiling. [Palm Beach Post archive]
The following month, architect Ames Bennett and developer-builder Robert Gottfried pulled the first permit for a $250,000 house, followed the next month by a $400,000 house designed by John Volk. And rather than build on the oceanfront parcel, Hogan also sold it, moving to a smaller house on South Ocean Boulevard. She died shortly after.
July 23, 1972-August 30, 1972. “Workers Destroy One of Palm Beach’s Last.” The wrecking company took weeks to sell-off Heamaw, as “collectors were anxious to save the beauty of the mansion,” reported The Post. [Palm Beach Post archive]
Heamaw: Afterlife at Belle Glade 1 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Belle Glade
Among the refined collectors was Bertram Dudley (B. D.) Cole who was planning a new building for his insurance company in downtown Belle Glade. Cole salvaged 16 tons of coral keystone, crafted by Mizner Industries from their Windley Key quarry, from Heamaw’s arches, balustrades, railings, entryways, window surrounds, moldings, columns, and capitals, as well as doorways, wrought-iron grilles, and accessories, then grafting them onto his new building. Abracadabra, flash forward 50 years and lawyer Thomas Montgomery who now owns the building, has maintained the building exactly as Cole build it.
August 2023. Montgomery Law Office, façade. 1 East Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Belle Glade. Heamaw coral stone columns, loggia flooring, coral door surround. [Photo Augustus Mayhew]
“I have not changed a thing,” said Montgomery. “I believe he hired an Italian craftsman who refitted the pieces from the Phipps estate to the office building.” Lawyer Tom Montgomery’s law office may only be 46 miles west of Palm Beach, but it felt like another planet when I pulled into the parking lot, immediately recognizing the pieces that once graced Phipps Row on North County Road.
Heamaw artifacts, window surrounds, column capitals, and busts. [Photo Augustus Mayhew]Heamaw artifacts, front door detail, doorknobs, and window grille. [Photo Augustus Mayhew]Heamaw artifacts, coral stone detail, door surrounds, entrance door. [Photo Augustus Mayhew]
Villa Artemis 656 North County Road
Villa Artemis, south entrance elevation, center courtyard, and east elevation. Amy Guest inhabited the central courtyard with tropical birds. Palm Beach-Miami architect August Geiger supervised the construction for F. Burrall Hoffman. As construction on Villa Artemis neared completion, Geiger designed an oceanfront house for Otto Kahn, Oheka I, located in Midtown at 166 North Ocean Boulevard. [Aerial,Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]
When The First Church of Christ Scientist in West Palm Beach sold its two-acre Lakeview Avenue and South Flagler Drive properties adjacent to the church to The Related Companies for $21 million in 2021, church members had not forgotten that it was Amy Phipps Guest who bought the property for the church nearly a century earlier for $20,000. Several years earlier, it was Amy’s sister-in-law Gladys (Mrs. Henry Carnegie) Phipps who had bought the adjoining property for the church building, according toCynthia P. Hammar, church historian.
“Also, our records show Amy Phipps Guest was instrumental in obtaining Horace Trumbauer as the architect. Since he designed the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with which Mrs. Guest was familiar, that is why she suggested a similar design of the museum’s central temple for the church. Mrs. Guest especially admired the Museum’s blue tile roof and paid to have similar tiles from Italy used for the church building,” Hammar added.
In concert with Guest’s architectural taste for the church, when she selected an architect in 1916 for her Palm Beach house, she opted for Francis Burrall Hoffman Jr. whose groundbreaking design for Vizcaya still stands as South Florida’s most significant 20th-century architectural standard.
Built at a cost of $60,000 in Palm Beach’s North End adjacent to the town’s historic Indian Mound tract, Villa Artemis was named for Guest’s daughter, Diana, as Artemis was the earlier mythological name for the Roman goddess Diana. A Harvard-Ecole des Beaux Arts trained architect who apprenticed with Carere & Hastings, Hoffman’s work would find a more appreciative audience for his work on Jupiter Island and Boca Grande rather than Palm Beach.
“Mrs. Frederick Guest Home is Magnificent.” [Palm Beach Post & Miami News]July-August 1916. As construction began on Villa Artemis during the summer of 1916, it was “watched by hundreds.” [Miami News & Palm Beach Post archive] Phipps family members bought surrounding parcels. [Aerial,Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]Villa Artemis and adjacent tracts, view looking west toward the lakefront, shortly after the ocean boulevard was closed and the County Road became the principal entrance. [Aerial,Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]
For Villa Artemis, Hoffman devised an upper-level loggia inspired by his work at Vizcaya, patterned on a similar loggia at Villa Pliniana on Lake Como. For Deering, he had crafted a double-columned loggia between the courtyard and the bayfront terrace opening on two sides rather than the customary three-walled loggia. At Villa Artemis, window and door surrounds were trimmed with Grecian-style panels. Originally, there were loggias on both the first and second floor framed by Doric columns overlooking the pool, highlighted by a small circular Greek-styled temple with views of the ocean beyond.
Villa Pliniana, west lakefront elevation and central double-columned loggia looking north onto Lake Como. Torno, Italy. [Photos Augustus Mayhew]Villa Artemis, east elevation, with the second-level double-columned loggia built facing North Ocean Boulevard and the ocean when it ran directly along the North End’s oceanfront. [Aerial,Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]Villa Artemis & Lake Cottage, located across County Road and extending to the lakefront. Amy’s mother Annie, Michael Grace, and Jay Phipps bought surrounding parcels. [Aerial,Richard Yarnall Richie Collection, DeGolyer Library, SMU]Designer and builder C.C. Haight sold Amy Phipps Guest his lakeside cottage, pictured above from an early advertisement. Amy often stayed in the Victorian-styled cottage that enjoyed a flashbulb of fame when it was the site of the famous midnight 1948 wedding of Winthrop Rockefeller and Barbara “Bobo” Sears, akaEva Paul, aka Jievute Paulekiute, aka Miss Lithuania.
By the time Amy and husband MP Frederick Guest’s house at Palm Beach neared completion during World War I, they had both become prominent political and cultural personalities. In 1911, they acquired Aldford House, one of London’s sizable, albeit eclectic, mansions in Mayfair.
“Pittsburgh Woman is State Hostess.” As her husband’s cousin was Winston Churchill, the Guests every move became a headline. In 1912, they sold their Carlton House terrace residence and bought the block long Aldford House on Park Lane.Aldford House, Park Lane, Mayfair, London. Purchased in 1912 and reported to have cost $2 million to build, Amy and “Freddie” brought in British architect George A Crawley to update Aldford. A family houseguest on Long Island and Palm Beach, Crawley designed Westbury House for Jay and Margarita Phipps. [Library of Congress]“Phipps Grandchildren in America …” As war threatened, the Guests sent their children, Winston, Diana, and Raymond, to the United States. [Pittsburgh Post, August 7, 1915]
The Guests’ residence “with marble halls paneled with carved English oak, and gold-framed mirrors” became a 50-bed American Red Cross Hospital for the US Navy’s wounded soldiers during the war. Amy was instilled with a strong sense of patriotism ever since the Spanish-American War when she enrolled in a nurse’s training program at New York’s St. Luke’s Hospital in 1898, at the ready for the front lines.
New York, 1898. “A Millionaire’s Daughter.” Rather than another summer in Scotland at Knebworth Castle, Amy enrolled in nursing classes despite her parents’ pleadings. [Pittsburgh Post Gazette, June 20, 1898]Aldford House, central staircase. Aides carry a patient on a stretcher up the marble stairs to an upstairs ward. [Library of Congress]Aldford House, ground floor plan. Enlisted men were housed on the ground floor rooms with officers on the next level.Amy Phipps Guest, a trained nurse with considerable musical talent, pictured above with guitar, entertaining the recovering troops. [Library of Congress]“Pittsburgh Girl Nurses Yankee Officers in England.” [Library of Congress]When Villa Artemis construction was completed, she had to remain in London after the war. Amy leased the house for the season.Ned and Evelyn Walsh McLean with their son, once known as “The 100 Million Dollar Baby,” at Palm Beach. [Historical Society of Palm Beach County]
January-February 1919. “Guest Villa Leased by Edward B. McLean.” Villa Artemis was declared “ the most elaborate place ever built here with the single exception of Whitehall …”
