March 19, 2011 Palm Beach is really something…

We resolve our TomTom vs. Garman contest when we find Radio Shack wants a 15% restocking fee It has been a tough competition with each GPS, same price-point, having unique strengths and deficiencies, but we had to make a decision while we still could, so today we return the TomTom without challenge to Costco. Thank you again, Costco.

Leaving Costco in beautiful weather, we drive to Palm Beach and visit the Flagler Museum and the Breakers hotel.

This is the same Henry Flagler we talked about in our St. Augustine posts, relatively unknown to us but one of the founding partners in Standard Oil.

In his fifties, his interests moved from Standard Oil to developing Florida. By 1912 Flagler had connected Jacksonville in the north with Key West in the south by railway, an impressive engineering and construction accomplishment, particularly along the southern keys. The railway and seven luxury hotels he built along the route drove the modern Florida economy, one based on agriculture, tourism, and real estate development.

Grand Hall, at 5000 square feet, much larger than our home.

Marble lacework similar to one see in St. Johns Newfoundland last year.

I wonder which one is Henry.

A nice use of aluminum in the mansion.

Flagler’s first wife died naturally. His second wife (the first wife’s nurse) became delusional and was hospitalized and was eventually divorced by Henry, although he provided for her maintenance until her death. In 1902, he built Whitewall, a 75-room mansion in Palm Beach, as a gift for his 3rd wife, 37 years his junior. They used it “several weeks a year”. It is now the Flagler Museum, and we paid an expensive $18/each for a very good audio tour. As Marcia observed, our entire house would fit easily into Flagler’s 5000 square-foot Grand Hall. (But our bed in our master bedroom is bigger than his.)

But everything in Palm Beach is expensive, and grand. Afterwards we dashed to The Breakers, an immense Flagler luxury hotel project. The grounds and building are beautiful and the people are truly not like you and me, or at least not like me. Young, beautiful, 99% white, many accents, money everywhere. As we walked in the front door a Ferrari is idling in the drive, and a Ferrari idling does not sound like a Nissan Murano idling.