Boca Rococo: How Addison Mizner Invented Florida's Gold Coast

ISBN: 0609605151

Author: Seebohm, Caroline

Condition: New

The rollicking tale of the artist, adventurer, and visionary whose innovative architecture transformed Palm Beach and whose dramatic rise and fall mirrors the larger-than-life excesses of the 1920s.Addison Mizners Mediterranean-style mansions-with their stucco walls, tiled roofs, and Moorish accents-are much-admired Florida icons. In Boca Rococo, renowned author and biographer Caroline Seebohm introduces the flamboyant genius behind these pastel palaces.Mizner was a leading San Francisco society figure in the 1890s, joined the Alaska Gold Rush, traveled to China, and made his way to an exploding turn-of-the-century New York. No formal training but huge natural talent established him as architect of the rich and famous. The getaways he designed made Palm Beach Americas most elegant resort-and fed his dream of developing a Venice-on-the-Ocean in nearby Boca Raton. Mizners plans ended with the collapse of Floridas real estate boom. He died in 1933, broken and bankrupt.Drawing on a huge cache of untapped materials-including measured plans and an unpublished autobiography-Seebohm restores Mizner to the pantheon of great architects and flamboyant Americans.