Photo by Boca Raton Historical Society
One hundred years after the incorporation of Boca Raton, the Boca Raton Historical Society honors the name of our city’s visionary architect: Addison Mizner.
The Mizner name is all around town as our original city planner and architectural celebutante of The Boca Raton Country Club and its iconic Cloister Hotel, an original luxury landmark.
Attendees of The Boca Raton Historical Society’s Centennial Exhibit can expect a “multi-dimensional experience,” as their website details no shortage of historical artifacts and documentation, paying homage to the father of, as Forbes describes it, “a playground for the rich and famous.”
The exhibit is titled “Boca Raton 1925-2025: Addison Mizner’s Legacy,” and showcases Mizner’s real estate and architectural legacy, which began with his perspective not just as an artist but as a visionary businessman. This hybrid perspective, certainly analogous to the cultural and economic tones of Boca Raton, perhaps helped him understand the importance of timelessness and quality.
After all, Mizner built a world-class style that withstood Florida’s real estate bust of the 1920s, including the bankruptcy of his Mizner Development Corporation.
As depicted in Architectural Digest’s “How Addison Mizner Defined South Florida’s Architectural Legacy,” Mizner’s career launch has a storied beginning. Mizner lived in New York for some time, “But the apex of Mizner’s career wouldn’t begin until 1918, when he visited the tony resort town of Palm Beach for his health at the suggestion of his friend Paris Singer.”
The rest is history.
Yet, while newcomers and veteran residents alike are drawn in by the prestige now recognized by the familiar Mediterranean-Colonial architectural style of our city—and its hidden gems of rolling green golf fields and palace-like resorts—many of us fail to recognize the entire story of the city’s most significant landmarks.
Perhaps this is why the exhibit’s centerpiece is The Cloister, one of the many decadent properties that Mizner hoped to bring to life for Boca Raton. If The Boca Raton Historical Society’s virtual exhibit, “Mizner’s Dream,” is any taste of the Centennial Exhibit, you can hope to be drawn into the original vision for the city, a master plan to create a coveted, truly American landscape.
The Cloister Inn is not just a manifestation of Southeastern Florida’s warm weather we’ve come to know and love. The resort was a final hurrah for Mizner, who, according to the Boca Raton Historical Society, “pressed for the completion of the Cloister Inn” despite sure economic downfall.
If you haven’t made it there yet, don’t miss The Boca Raton Historical Society’s centennial exhibit, which tells this story from November 13, 2024, to May 30, 2025.