By Marcia Abramson
The president's parent's family compound was at the very end of the road. It was actually a vast oceanfront property, deemed too difficult for the Secret Service to adequately patrol. The president and Jackie requested the owners, Colonel Capton Michael Paul and his wife Josephine Bey Paul of 401 North County Road for permission to borrow their lovely home (a smaller oceanfront home) for a holiday vacation. The Pauls considered it an honor to have the president and his family use their home. Needless to say, the house was beautifully furnished with antique furniture and many of the original French impressionist paintings adorning the walls. Jacqueline Kennedy, the children, Carolyn and "John John," used the bedroom suites on the second level of the house and the president used the bedroom suite in the atrium adjoining the Olympic-sized seawater pool on the ground level because of his inability to manage the stairs leading to the upper floor. I saw the lovely handwritten note by Jackie Kennedy thanking the Pauls for the use of their home and signed by her for her two ashtray breaking children. It was on display in a silver frame. Unfortunately, with the death of the Paul family years later, I was told by a Palm Beach historian that the home was demolished to make way for three waterfront homes on the 3 1/2-acre property. I, also found on my last visit to Palm Beach that the address marker "401 North County Road" did not exist any more. In its place was a road leading to those new mansions. But I was delighted to find that One South County Road is still the address and locale of The Breakers Palm Beach, one of the world's grandest hotels and resorts. Its history dates back to 1896 when Henry Morrison Flagler became enamored by the mild climate along Florida's eastern seaboard and started buying and building railroads and resort hotels from St. Augustine to Palm Beach. He quickly found that his first Palm Beach property, the Royal Poinciana, opened in 1984 and attracted the cream of American society to tiny Palm Beach. It actually became the world's largest hotel, covering more than 1,800 feet along Lake Worth with over 1,100 rooms accommodating 1,750 guests. The hallways extended over a distance of thee miles in length, making it necessary for the bellhops to bicycle to make deliveries to the guestrooms from the front desk. The success of the Royal Poinciana encouraged Flagler to build the smaller Palm Beach Inn on the beachfront property of the Royal Poinciana in 1896. Its location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and its more serene ambiance and smaller size clicked immediately with an elite clientele, and was booked to capacity in its very first season. Flagler, the astute businessman, recognized that his Poinciana guests were requesting reservations for the smaller hotel "down by the breakers" and built an extension to the Palm Beach Inn for the 1901 season and renamed it The Breakers. In 1903 the wood building was enlarged for the fourth time in less than a decade when it burned down again. Flagler was determined to rebuild for the 1904 season and did indeed reopen with its new name, The Breakers Palm Beach. The going rate at the time for the 425 rooms started at $4 a night with three meals a day (American Plan). The Breakers guest register read like a "who's who" of early-20th century America: Rockefellers; Vanderbilts; Asters; the tycoons Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan; the publisher William Randolph Hearst and the five and dime kings W.T. Grant and J.C. Penny and even European Royalty and some U.S. presidents. The Breakers was re-visited by a horrendous fire in 1925, only to be rebuilt on the same site by more than 1,200 construction workers to open in time for the 1926 winter season. The architects designed the façade of the new building to reflect the Italian Renaissance era in the style of the 16th century Villa Medici. It was difficult for me to conceive that I was not on Old World Palace Grounds when I drove up the main drive to an entrance flanked by 3,000 majestic Palm Trees, a sparkling Florentine fountain. The lobby further enhanced the palatial feeling by vaulted regal hand-painted gold ceilings, awesome crystal, bronze and mirrored chandeliers. I did feel like a "Queen for the Evening" when I dined at The Breakers signature restaurant L'Escalier (the staircase), located in the original Florentine Dining Room.
Copyright by Marcia AbramsonE-mail: mascribe@aol.com
