68 Facts About Addison Mizner

Addison Cairns Mizner was an American architect whose Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style interpretations changed the character of southern Florida, where the style is continued by architects and land developers.

Addison Mizner believed that architecture should include interior and garden design, and initiated the company Mizner Industries to have a reliable source of components.

Addison Mizner was "an architect with a philosophy and a dream".

Addison Mizner died in 1933 of heart failure in Palm Beach and is buried in the family vault at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park.

Addison Mizner was just completely outgoing and basically a really good guy.

The vast majority of Addison Mizner's employees developed an affection for and allegiance to him: "It was a pleasure working for Addison Mizner", one remarked.

Addison Mizner accompanied his father when the latter travelled to Guatemala in August 1889 to begin his duties there.

Addison Mizner's first stop, aged 15, on the boat to Guatemala was Mazatlan, Mexico.

Addison Mizner's father Lansing Mizner spoke fluent Spanish, as did his paternal step-grandfather, James Semple, a US diplomat in Spanish America.

Addison Mizner, who became fluent, after some tutoring enrolled at the Instituto Nacional in Guatemala City, "where we learned that boys fought with knives and not with fists".

Addison Mizner remained there for a year, visiting Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras with his father, before returning to California in 1890 to study at the Bates School, a boarding school in San Rafael, California.

Addison Mizner continued his studies briefly at Boone's College in Berkeley, California, with the hope of passing the entrance examination for the University of California.

Addison Mizner assembled an excellent library on Spanish and Spanish Colonial architecture, which has survived and is administered by the Historical Society of Palm Beach County.

The Mediterranean Revival style Addison Mizner introduced to South Florida was not Turkish or Italian, it was Spanish, specifically of the hottest, southern part of Spain, Andalucia; colonial Guatemala had similar architecture.

Addison Mizner taught workmen to make Spanish red roof tiles, appropriate for the climate.

Many of Addison Mizner's projects have Spanish names: El Mirasol, El Solano, La Ronda, and others.

In 1903 Addison Mizner provided illustrations for The Limerick Up to Date Book of Ethel Watts Mumford.

Addison Mizner invented stories, all set in foreign countries and thus in practice unverifiable.

Addison Mizner's well-informed father, the US ambassador, surely knew about some of these visitors.

Addison Mizner told a story about how, in 1892, Argelia Benton, the American wife of Guatemalan dictator Jose Maria Reina Barrios, invited him to build a new palace for her in Guatemala City.

Addison Mizner was to receive a retainer of $25,000 in gold, but Barrios was assassinated before Mizner received any of the money.

Much later, Addison Mizner said several times that he enrolled "at some point during this time" in the University of Salamanca, in Spain, though the only known detail about his studies there, if they existed, is that he did not receive a degree.

Addison Mizner did not follow the somber architectural style of Castile, where Toledo was, and a similarity between the two buildings is difficult to see.

Addison Mizner embellished it further by adding that they had missed a steamer and had to travel by dugout canoe; there have never been dugout canoes in Costa Rica.

Addison Mizner said that he based a dining hall, with multiple wash stations, on a "hospital" in Vic, Spain; there is no such building in Vic.

Addison Mizner invented a prize fight in Australia; he had a lifelong leg injury and could not possibly box.

Addison Mizner had to escape out the back door with his share of the gate, head for the harbor, and board a ship whose gangplank was conveniently just being drawn up.

Addison Mizner returned to Guatemala for a few months in 1904.

In 1905, Addison Mizner visited Spain for the first time; after that, he visited Europe every year.

In 1924, Addison Mizner went on a buying trip to Spain, scouring antique shops, buying "furiously" thousands of items: wrought iron, tapestries, furniture, grillwork, and whole staircases.

Addison Mizner described himself as a "lifelong bachelor", after "a few unsuccessful relationships with women in California and New York".

One of these "young and handsome" men was Alex Waugh, who accompanied Addison Mizner on buying trips and ended up manager of the antiques and reproduction furniture store for Addison Mizner Industries.

Addison Mizner met Jerry Girandolle in New York and, after giving him a new Cadillac, made him manager of the furniture factory [Jack having departed].

Later, Addison Mizner was attracted to the young painter he used on the Cosden house, Achille Angeli, 'a strikingly handsome young fellow'.

Polk was only five years older than Addison Mizner and was not committed to any architectural style.

Addison Mizner designed Rock Hall in Connecticut and the main house of the Hitchcock Estate in Dutchess County, New York.

In January 1918, aged 46, Addison Mizner visited Palm Beach, Florida for his health, at the suggestion of Paris Singer, whose house guest he was.

Addison Mizner's houses were generally one room deep to allow cross-ventilation, with kitchens located in wings to keep their heat away from living areas.

Addison Mizner received many subsequent commissions, in what was the most successful part of his career.

Addison Mizner's clients were wealthy and socially prominent: Gurnee Munn, John Shaffer Phipps, Barclay Harding Warburton II, Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr.

Addison Mizner lacked the talent for making conventional plans and specifications.

Addison Mizner was a pioneer in developing artificial or cast stone, a combination of coquina shell, lime, and a cement mixture.

Addison Mizner used "woodite", a composite material with a wood component, which could be poured and molded.

Addison Mizner would improvise a building's design as he went; he was someone who "would take a lot of liberties", who "let his imagination run riot".

Addison Mizner was someone who was willing to take a lot of liberties and design buildings that were good for the climate and the lifestyle of the people who were his clients.

Addison Mizner created a version of Spanish style that was appropriate to twentieth-century Florida.

In Boynton Beach, Florida, between Palm Beach and the future Boca Raton, Addison Mizner's first vision of a "comprehensive ocean city" was a mile-long resort.

Addison Mizner designed plans for a never-built Boynton Woman's Club without fee "in an effort to make amends to the city".

In 1925 Addison Mizner embarked on his most ambitious project, what he called his "culminating achievement": the creation of a fabulous resort at Boca Raton.

Addison Mizner began by forming the Mizner Development Corporation, a syndicate of prominent investors including Rodman Wanamaker, Paris Singer, Irving Berlin, William Kissam Vanderbilt II, Elizabeth Arden, Jesse Livermore, Clarence H Geist, and T Coleman du Pont as chairman.

Addison Mizner ran buses to Boca from Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, and used seaplanes to transport potential buyers to the site.

Addison Mizner had no financial plan, and tried to handle finance off the cuff as well.

DuPont unsuccessfully requested the resignations of Reichenbach and corporation treasurer Wilson Addison Mizner, who taught salesmen to mention the famous names.

Geist, a utilities executive, saw to it that Boca got a fine water plant; Addison Mizner was unconcerned about such infrastructure.

Addison Mizner was not noted for his business acumen, and a recent biographer qualifies him as "naive" and "in denial", but with no intention to defraud.

Addison Mizner apparently knew nothing of this and would likely have been horrified if he had learned of it.

Addison Mizner Industries was declared bankrupt four months after Addison Mizner's death in 1933.

Addison Mizner had stopped paying federal tax and county property tax after 1928.

Addison Mizner emerged from the bankruptcy reorganization and continued operations.

In 1927 Mizner built a house for John R Bradley called Casa Serena in Colorado Springs.

Several of Addison Mizner's friends got together in 1928 to publish a folio monograph of his work.

Addison Mizner designed and directed its creation from 1929 to 1930.

Addison Mizner integrated the principal indoor and outdoor rooms by a cloistered arcade with slender columns on three sides of a large courtyard.

Addison Mizner linked that to the inclined axis with a pavilion in the form of a Palladian arch on a terraced stone pedestal at the vista terminus.

Addison Mizner used many high art details not generally found in this area.

Addison Mizner's buildings were typically dismissed by Modernist critics for their eclectic historicist aesthetic.

Addison Mizner was the brother and sometimes partner of businessman, raconteur, con man, professional gambler, and playwright Wilson Mizner, whom Addison termed "my chief weakness and dreaded menace".

Addison Mizner's Lounge closed on April 12,2019, to be replaced by a Beauty and the Beast-themed bar and lounge.