A Boca Rococo Palm Beach Mansion Lists for $47.5M
This property is listed for $47,500,000 by Christian J. Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate.
This South Ocean Boulevard retreat is known as El Solano, and is positioned on a slender stretch of coastline neighbouring several billionaires’ second homes. The property comes with a tennis court, two swimming pools, and a beachfront cabana. An eclectic example of Spanish colonial architecture, this seven-bedroom, 14,145 square foot mansion was built by the "society architect" Addison Mizner in 1925.
In the 1920s, Mizner was the “most-discussed living American architect”. He was hired in 1924 to transform the city of Boca Raton into "the foremost resort city on the North American continent”.."a resort as splendid in its entirety as Palm Beach is in spots."
Famous for his defining style of Mediterranean Revival architecture, Mizer would utilize various methods of vandalism (burning pots of tarpaper, cracking mantles with sledgehammers, rusting iron with acid) to patina his structures and create a look he called “the kiss of the centuries”. Most notably, his use of worm-eaten cyprus, worthless for structural elements but beautiful for it’s aged appearance, became the “mahogany paneling of Palm Beach”.
He had successfully set up the Mizner Development Corporation with a board of high society contacts, and used his fame and reputation as a Palm Beach builder to project the idea that investing in Florida property was akin to “gold”. Unfortunately, Mizer was as off the cuff with his eclectic styles as with his financial planning, and his "extravagant imagination outstripped his budget and the market."
Although he had sold over $2 million in lots on the first day of sales for Boca Raton, most of the lots were not paid for and Mizner didn’t actually have the money he needed to build. By 1926, the land boom collapse would send Mizner into bankruptcy, marking the beginning of the end of his career as an architect.
Mizner died in 1933, but his legacy and story would live on in books, and eventually on Broadway. Stephen Sondheim’s musical ‘Road Show’ was based on Addison Mizner and his brother, Wilson Mizner, a “businessman, raconteur, con man, professional gambler, and playwright, whom Addison called "my chief weakness and dreaded menace". The musical follows the “adventures of the brothers across America, from the beginning of the 20th century during the Klondike gold rush, to the Florida real estate book of the 1920s”, with many creative liberties taken in the accounts.
Today, few of Mizer’s original mansions remain and the Palm Beach mansion is most famous for being the former residence of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, purchased shortly before his untimely death in 1980.
All photos belong to the listing agency.