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

by Caroline Seebohm (Author) "TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 1891. SAN FRANCISCO. I Addison Mizner commence a diary at the age of 18 on the above date..." (more)
Key Phrases: pecky cypress, architectural career, Palm Beach, New York, San Francisco (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The title of this pleasingly told biography of Mizner--the hulking bon vivant who designed Spanish-style fantasia homes for the Jazz Age elite of South Florida--advances a general misconception about him: though his name is commonly associated with Boca Raton, he actually designed precious little for that town before his sprawlingly grandiose development scheme there caved in, leaving him broke for the short remainder of his life. Rather, the bulk of his work is in Palm Beach, where he designed countless romantic but shrewdly conceived Spanish Revival homes and estates for the old and new rich who flocked to this tropical "last frontier" in the 1920s. Seebohm accordingly focuses most on this output--from the early residence El Mirasol to the latter Playa Riente, not to mention Mizner's elegant Everglades Club and his own Via Mizner, which in a sense was America's first open-air shopping mall. (Photographs weren't available for review, but they will make up two 16-page inserts, unfortunately in black-and-white; Mizner was a master of intoxicating pastels.)

This isn't a rigid, theoretical sort of monograph, but, then again, Mizner wasn't a rigid, theoretical sort of architect--he had no formal training and (critics have noted) he did nothing to advance architectural idiom like the modernists. His genius was the way in which he parlayed a wildly divergent early career (that included travel in Alaska, China and Guatemala) into what became a vast enterprise in which he not only designed homes, interiors, and landscapes of distinct beauty and coherence, but oversaw and trained a virtual army of workers in the art of buying or reproducing Spanish stucco, tile work, pottery, furniture, and more. Adored in both high society and bohemian circles, his friends included everyone from grand dame Eva Stotesbury, for whom he designed El Mirasol, to composer Irving Berlin. He was also wildly flamboyant, uniquely resilient and adept at self-reinvention, and apparently blessed with a heart as big as his waistline. As such, Mizner lived a life as much about all-American pluck and luck in a heady, doomed decade as it was about architectural sensibility. Those two strands are deftly woven together here in a life story that approaches the same tone of genteel fondness that most of Mizner's rich lady friends routinely employed in recommending him to their ever-richer friends. --Timothy Murphy

From Publishers Weekly
Mizner (1872-1933) started out in high society in San Francisco in the 1890s, successfully searched for gold in Alaska and ended up designing homes for some of New York and Florida's wealthiest residents. Many of the elaborate houses he designed in Palm Beach and Boca Raton are still standing today. Unfortunately, Mizner's dreams ended with the Depression and he died bankrupt and alone. Seebohm (No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree) has written a wonderful account of this little-known but talented self-taught architect. Mizner's early days his devotion to his mother, his lack of formal education are particularly well detailed. He kept diaries and wrote letters to his family, which Seebohm has used. However, his real career developed almost accidentally when he was asked to design a house for a friend and ended up working on the interior as well. After moving to New York and meeting acclaimed architect Sanford White, his career began to flourish. He was inspired by almost anything: "He collected postcards and photographs of the places he saw castles, palaces, churches, fountains, furniture, sculpture, moldings, and the like and glued them in scrapbooks on his return home.... At his death, he had twenty-seven scrapbooks in all, with titles such as Moorish and Near East; Byzantine-Romanesque Ceilings" While some people may not admire the ambitious Mizner, readers, especially architecture aficionados and anyone who has seen his buildings in South Florida, will want to read this book. Photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; First Edition Stated / First Printing edition (October 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609605151
• ISBN-13: 978-0609605158
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,114,764 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read..., May 13, 2007

By	Peter B. Retallick (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found myself always wanting more of this book. The author has done a great job presenting the life of Addison Mizner. The starting point is interesting. Caroline Seebohm discovered a cache of records from the architect's office. What she failed to mention and may not know is that these records were split sometime after the death of Addison so there is another book to be written!