May 5, 2009: Palm Beach, Fl

This morning we decided to go back for an up close visit to the Henry Flagler Museum. There is a beautiful biking trail along the waterfront from the marina, so we had a great ride. We passed the Royal Park Bridge which was raised to be open to the ICW. We had the water to the left and to the right there were neighborhoods of large homes hidden behind beautiful well manicured hedges.

This grand house was built as a present for Henry’s bride Mary Lily Kenan in 1902.Whitehall was a 60,000 square foot, 55-room palace where the Flaglers came for the winter and established the Palm Beach season. As we have traveled, we have learned a lot about Henry Flagler’s fame as the father of the railroads in Florida so this visit to the museum filled out the picture.

Henry was one of the founders of Standard Oil Company in 1867, along with John D Rockefeller. He was the legal mind given credit for the invention of the multi-state corporation through a business trust. Sometimes it is hard for us to imagine today how different things were a century and a half ago. It was not until Henry was in his 50’s did he begin his development in Florida. By 1912, he had completed his Overseas Railroad from Jacksonville to Key West and built a number of luxury hotels which established the tourism industry for the state.

The mansion included a large music room with one end of the room totally filled with a pipe organ. There was an organist employed each winter who played a concert every day.

I especially liked the mahogany mantel piece in the dining room which was carved with shells, crabs and fruit. The dark wood glowed and was the center of the room. The adjacent breakfast room had a ceiling designed after patterns from Warwick Castle. I took special note because Warwick Castle was one of our stops on our last trip to England and dates back to 1000 AD.

There were around 10 bedrooms, all beautifully and uniquely decorated. Most of them had private baths and walk in closets. The master bath was really huge and was way ahead of its time – there was a phone on the wall. There was also an exhibit on handmade lace including rolls and samples from the 18^th century. Before there were lace making machines, lace was all handmade as a time consuming skilled labor task and was enormously expensive. Wearing lace by both men and women was an extreme sign of wealth. My aunt used to tat lace, a process using a little bobbin; it is a shame that lace making skills are dying out.

It was interesting seeing the life style of the rich and famous. There was a drawing room with a Steinway grand piano that was built just for that room. The raised designs in the wall panels were overlaid with a new metal not yet in mass production, aluminum. Everything was quite grand.

We saw a picture of Mary Lily Kenan wearing a 7 foot strand of natural pearls. The tour guide said that these were more valuable than if it was a strand of diamonds, because this was before cultured pearls were developed so pearls were exceeding rare. So to my UNC fans, is the name Kenan familiar? Mary Lily Kenan was born to parents in Chapel Hill, NC, and later donated $2M to establish the Kenan Foundation. The Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC is named for the couple who built and lived in Whitehall.

Behind the house on Lake Worth, there was a glass roofed pavilion that was built to represent a railway station from the Golden Age. It was constructed to house the personal rail car that was Henry’s carriage for his first trip on the new completed railroad to Key West. The decor was plush and included wood paneled sitting room, bed room, staff room complete with two plumbed bathrooms and a kitchen with an old black iron stove. Imagine what a grand ride that must have been through the Keys with water on both sides of the train.