Addison Mizner: The Untrained Architect Who Built Palm Beach

A 300-pound man with no architecture degree, a spider monkey on his shoulder, and a silk-lined sombrero stitched for the monkey. That was Addison Mizner walking down Worth Avenue in the 1920s. In barely a decade, he transformed Palm Beach from a winter outpost into one of the most recognizable luxury destinations in the country.

From Gold Rush to Gold Coast

Born in Benicia, California, in 1872, Mizner grew up tagging along with his diplomat father to Guatemala, where he fell in love with Spanish colonial architecture: the barrel tile roofs, wrought iron, and ornate carved wood. He never earned a formal degree. Instead, he apprenticed in New York, dabbled in furniture dealing, and even chased gold in the Klondike with his brother Wilson. None of it panned out. Then, in 1918, Paris Singer (heir to the sewing machine fortune) invited the broke, ailing Mizner to Palm Beach to recover. He never left.

The Man Who Invented a Style

Singer hired Mizner to design the Everglades Club, originally planned as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. The war ended, plans changed, and in 1919 the club opened as a private resort. It sold 500 memberships almost immediately. Palm Beach’s wealthiest families lined up for commissions. Between 1919 and 1926, Mizner designed 67 structures across Palm Beach, including Via Mizner on Worth Avenue and La Guerida, the estate John F. Kennedy’s family later used as the Winter White House. When he couldn’t find craftsmen to produce the tiles and ironwork his designs required, he started Mizner Industries and manufactured them himself.

A Monkey, a Dream, and the Bust

Mizner’s constant companion was Johnnie Brown, a spider monkey who attended society parties, was hand-fed by hostesses, and once “ran for mayor” of Palm Beach. (He nearly won.) In 1925, Mizner aimed bigger: he bought up oceanfront land in Boca Raton to build what he called the “Greatest Resort in the World.” Lots sold $2 million on day one. But the 1926 hurricane and the land bust wiped him out. The Cloister Inn, once the most expensive 100-room hotel ever built, survived just one season under his watch. Mizner died in 1933, nearly penniless, in a villa above his own Worth Avenue shops. Johnnie Brown’s tombstone still sits in the courtyard below, now part of Pizza al Fresco’s outdoor dining area. An 11-foot statue of Mizner, with Johnnie perched on his shoulder, watches over downtown Boca Raton.