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Addison Cairns Mizner (December 12, 1872 – February 5, 1933) was an American architect whose Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style interpretations left an indelible stamp on South Florida, where it continues to inspire architects and land developers.[1] In the 1920s Mizner was the best-known and most-discussed living American architect.[2]: 5 Palm Beach, Florida, which he "transformed", was his home, and most of his houses are there. He believed that architecture should also include interior and garden design, and set up Mizner Industries to have a reliable source of components. He was "an architect with a philosophy and a dream."[2]: 5 Boca Raton, Florida, an unincorporated small farming town that was established in 1896, became the focus of Mizner's most famous development project.

The 6-foot-2-inch (1.88 m), 250-pound (110 kg) bon vivant epitomized the "society architect." Rejecting other modern architects for "producing a characterless copybook effect," he sought to "make a building look traditional and as though it had fought its way from a small, unimportant structure to a great, rambling house that took centuries of different needs and ups and downs of wealth to accomplish. I sometimes start a house with a Romanesque corner, pretend that it has fallen into disrepair and been added to in the Gothic spirit, when suddenly the great wealth of the New World has poured in and the owner had added a very rich Renaissance addition."[4] Or as he described his own never-built castle, drawings of which were part of his promotional literature, it would be "a Spanish fortress of the twelfth century captured from its owner by a stronger enemy who, after taking it, adds on one wing and another, and then loses it in turn to another who builds to suit his taste."[5]: 21 As these quotes suggest, many Mizner buildings contain styles from more than one period, but all foreign.

In 1927 Mizner built a house for John R. Bradley called Casa Serena in Colorado Springs. Several of Mizner's friends got together in 1928 to publish a folio monograph of his work. It was entitled Florida Architecture of Addison Mizner and featured 185 photographs of homes by Frank Geisler. Paris Singer contributed an introduction and Ida M. Tarbell wrote the text.[64] There was also an "Edición Imperial", limited to 100 copies, a leather-bound, gold-tooled version with slipcase cover.[10]: 278 This brought Mizner several commissions but they came to a stop with the beginning of the world depression. "With neither prospects nor money, [he] was sadly forced to rely on financial support from friends [such as] Irving Berlin and Edward Moore."[10]: 292–293

The one exception was the extensive Dieterich estate, 'Casa Bienvenida' (Welcome House), on Park Lane in Montecito near Santa Barbara, California.[65] He designed and directed its creation from 1929 to 1930.[66] The significant new Mediterranean Revival estate's budget was unhindered by the Wall Street crash of 1929. The naturalistic landscape and formal gardens were designed by atmospheric painter and landscape designer Lockwood de Forest Jr. (1850–1932). His water channels are replicas of those at Villa Lante at Bagnaia, near Viterbo in the Italian Tuscany region.[67] Mizner integrated the principal indoor and outdoor rooms by a cloistered arcade with slender columns on three sides of a large courtyard. He linked that to the inclined axis with a pavilion in the form of a Palladian arch on a terraced stone pedestal at the vista terminus.[68] Casa Bienvenida is extant and well maintained to the present day.

Mizner's buildings were typically dismissed by Modernist critics for their eclectic historicist aesthetic. Many were torn down and redeveloped, but a number of those that survive are now on the National Register.

Architects and contractors alike copied Mizner's iteration of Spanish colonial architecture.[2]: 48

The Mizner name lives on. In the Boca Raton area, his names, Addison and Mizner, are frequently found on streets, businesses, and developments. On the grounds of the Boca Raton Resort and Club is Mizner Lake Estates, an intimate 15-estate gated enclave of million dollar homes with 24-hour security. In Delray Beach can be found Addison Reserve Country Club, a golf and tennis community of 717 luxury single-family homes situated on 653 acres (2.64 km2). It consists of nineteen villages with names such as "Mirasol" and "Playa Riente".[69] Also in Boca Raton is Mizner Park, an upscale "lifestyle center" with shops, rental apartments, and offices. In March 2005, to commemorate his visionary contributions to both the city and Florida architecture, an 11-foot-tall (3.4 m) statue of the architect by Colombian sculptor Cristobal Gaviria was erected in Boca Raton at Mizner Boulevard and U.S. 1. In addition, Addison Mizner Elementary School in Boca Raton was named for him in 1968.

He was the brother and sometimes partner of businessman, raconteur, con man, professional gambler, and playwright Wilson Mizner, whom Addison called "my chief weakness and dreaded menace".[6]: 235 The brothers' series of picaresque misadventures were the inspiration for Stephen Sondheim's musical Road Show (2008) (also titled Bounce and Gold!), which was also produced in Chicago and London. Previously, in 1952, Addison's friend Irving Berlin wrote a musical called Wise Guy (also called Palm Beach, Sentimental Guy, and The Mizner Story), which never got produced. It featured Addison, Wilson, his friends, and his clients.[70] According to the Introduction by Isaiah Sheffer, three songs from that work were included in the sheet music album The Unsung Irving Berlin, 1996. The only one found there, "You're a Sentimental Guy

In 1951 Theodore Pratt wrote a novel, The Big Bubble, which is a thinly veiled biography of Mizner.[71] In 2014 Richard René Silvin published his book Villa Mizner: The House that Changed Palm Beach, chronicling the life of Addison Mizner though a story about Mizner's own home on Worth Avenue and Via Mizner, Palm Beach: Villa Mizner.

Mizner's Lounge was the bar at Walt Disney World's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa from the hotel's opening in 1988 until 2019.[72] Mizner's Lounge closed on April 12, 2019, and will be replaced by a Beauty and the Beast-themed bar and lounge.

The Mizner design scrapbooks and his complete library are available at the Society of the Four Arts Library in Palm Beach, Florida and available digitally from the Internet Archive.[74] Material relating to Boca Raton may be found at the Boca Raton Historical Society; many are available on their Web site. A large number of architectural drawings are in the collections of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County. Sketchbooks, photo albums, and some letters are at the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California.[16]: 63 A scrapbook from Guatemala is in the library of the University of Miami.

Courtesy – Wikipedia
- Mizner Addison

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