11 Facts About Paul Chalfin

Paul Chalfin was an artist and interior designer with an interest in architecture, best known for his work at Villa Vizcaya.

Paul Chalfin was born in New York City on November 2,1874, to Colonel Samuel Fletcher Chalfin and Jane Voorhees Chalfin.

Paul Chalfin entered Harvard College in 1894 but left after two years to become an artist, enrolling at the Art Students League of New York to study painting.

Paul Chalfin possessed excellent taste in building design and used his extensive observation of European buildings and monuments, and liked being mistaken for an architect, but he never studied or obtained a degree in architecture, nor did he ever work as an architect.

In 1899, while studying in Paris, Paul Chalfin traveled to Italy.

In 1905, the Lazarus Scholarship committee granted him a three-year scholarship to study mural painting in Italy, and, in 1906, Paul Chalfin moved to Rome where he lived at the American Academy.

In 1910, Chalfin began his most notable and successful project collaborating with F Burrall Hoffman on the landmark Villa Vizcaya for the industrial magnate James Deering.

In fact Paul Chalfin, who had been chosen by Deering as a consultant on external style and interior decoration, was the one who had hired Hoffman in the first place, precisely because Paul Chalfin knew that he himself was not an architect, and one would be required for this new building project.

Paul Chalfin returned to Vizcaya in 1934 to consult on rehabilitation of the property after a major hurricane.

Paul Chalfin died on February 15,1959, at the age of 84 in a nursing home in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.

In 1956, Paul Chalfin was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Decorators and was cited by the American Institute of Architects for his work on the interior of Villa Vizcaya.