[Photographs Courtesy Flagler Museum, Archival Images Courtesy Flagler Museum Archives.]

Henry Flagler's Whitehall - A Magnificent Gift Twice Given

When completed in 1902 the New York Herald proclaimed Whitehall, "more wonderful than any place in Europe, grander and more magnificent than any other private dwelling in the world," and published a double page photo spread of the magnificent home that is now an icon of Florida history. Henry Flagler built the 55-room Beaux Arts estate as Florida's first museum, and a wedding present for his wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler. Flagler used the home as a winter retreat from 1902 until his death in 1913.

While it is commonly known that Whitehall was built as a wedding gift, few realize that Whitehall was also built as a gift to the nation. Gilded Age American businessmen grew phenomenally wealthy developing new technologies that changed the daily lives of citizens. Because most of these titans of industry were self-made men, they were inclined to build institutions and foundations to provide opportunities for all citizens to improve their lives through hard work and education. Carnegie built hundreds of libraries nationwide and created the nation's largest foundation, while Peter Cooper built the Cooper Union, a university free to everyone.

Many Gilded Age leaders believed that their obligation to elevate and inspire society extended even to the design and construction of their homes. Andrew Carnegie explained, "It is well, nay essential, for the progress of the race that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts." A "home for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts" is a museum - a home for the Greek Muses who were the embodiment of literature and art.

Building the kind of private home described by Carnegie was one way in which society leaders inspired the public, as paintings and sculpture during the 19th century were typically displayed in palaces or salons. Public museums, so common today, were not at all common during the Gilded Age.

John Carrère was one of the great architects of the time who understood and promoted the value of building a museum-home. Carrere believed, "The amount of art education which a building can disseminate among the masses is far beyond what we realize."

Flagler commissioned John Carrère and Thomas Hastings, the talented young architects who had previously designed Flagler's Hotel Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine, to design Whitehall. Carrère and Hastings studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and designed many other iconic Gilded Age landmarks, including the New York Public Library, the Senate and House of Representatives office buildings in Washington, D.C., the New York Fifth Avenue mansion of Henry Clay Frick and the Standard Oil office building in New York.

The New York design firm of Pottier and Stymus was selected to create the interiors of Whitehall. In typical Gilded Age fashion, they designed the rooms in period styles such as Louis XIV, Louis XV and Italian Renaissance, but the best elements of earlier Western cultures were melded with the latest in American technology. For example, 19th-century American innovations such as steel beam construction and cast plaster ceilings allowed workers to complete Whitehall in only 18 months while creating the appearance of a much older and entirely handmade structure. The technology developed during the Gilded Age made the rapid construction of such a large and elaborate estate possible, while technological advances, such as indoor plumbing, central heat and electric lighting, made Whitehall the new benchmark of gracious living.