Latest news with #OldWorld-style
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The lasting legacy of architect and planner Addison Mizner on the city of Boca Raton
Editor's Note: As the city of Boca Raton celebrates its 100th anniversary of incorporation in May 1925, we look back at how it all started. This story originally ran in the Palm Beach Daily News in December 2024. By the mid-1920s, California-born architect Addison Mizner had established what would turn out to be his lasting legacy in the town of Palm Beach, having sparked a mania for houses, mansions and other buildings influenced by the architecture of Spain, Italy and Central America, yet bearing his own distinctive and sometimes flamboyant stamp. With his reputation established, Mizner looked south about 30 miles — to the coastal farming settlement of Boca Raton — with a vision that could only be described as grand. He would design and build a resort city from the ground up, taking his architectural cues from Venice and Moorish Spain. As he envisioned it, homes and a luxury hotel would be connected by a grand canal — complete with gondolas and gondoliers — as well as El Camino Real, described in promotional materials as 'The Royal Highway of Boca Raton.' It was 1925, at the height of Florida's soon-to-bust land boom, when Mizner and a group of financial backers founded Mizner Development Corp. to create that dream of a town on 1,600 acres along the Intracoastal Waterway. The city would also have 2 miles of oceanfront. The investors in Mizner Development Corp. included Paris Singer, the Singer Sewing Machine heir, who had given Mizner his first Palm Beach commission in 1918 to design the building that became The Everglades Club. Mizner's dream for Boca Raton would ultimately implode, smashed in 1926 by Florida's land bust driven by a frenzy of speculation as well as a devastating hurricane. By 1927, Mizner was bankrupt. By 1933, he was dead, at age 60. But in May 1925, when Boca Raton was incorporated, the newly formed Town Council was heartily embracing Mizner's vision, which was nothing short of captivating — an Old World-style oasis that would somehow capture the excitement of the Roaring Twenties. Mizner threw himself into the Boca Raton project with gusto. 'It is my soul, my heart, my pride to which I shall give my all," he told the Miami News at the time. "If it is not made the most beautiful place in all the world, it will not be for want of trying.' To celebrate the city's centennial, the Boca Raton Historical Society's exhibit 'Boca Raton 1925-2025: Addison Mizner's Legacy' is running through May 30 at The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum on Federal Highway. The multimedia exhibit highlights Boca Raton's past century of development, beginning with Mizner's early contributions and tracing his lasting influence. On view are photographs, drawings, maps and videos, along with historic artifacts and furnishings associated with Mizner. There are still architectural remnants of Mizner's dream standing in Boca Raton, including parts of the design for the historic City Hall building, which houses the museum, and homes in the Old Floresta and Spanish Village residential neighborhoods. Just as important was Mizner's original hotel building, which debuted as The Ritz-Carlton Cloister but today is part of the much larger luxury resort known simply as The Boca Raton. The 1,000-room resort and private club is the main sponsor of the exhibit. Historian Augustus Mayhew, who served as guest curator for the exhibit, told the Palm Beach Daily News the opening of the Ritz-Carlton Cloister, often referred to as The Cloister Inn, was a milestone for Mizner and his investors. Yet by the summer of 1926, after less than a year, Mizner's experiment in urban planning came to a shocking end when high-profile board members withdrew their support, leaving Mizner in horrific financial distress. As he researched the exhibit, Mayhew said, he was struck by the lasting effects of the project's failure on Mizner's reputation as a businessman. 'Although in later years Mizner and his brother Wilson were often caricatured as con men, fraudsters and thieves, I was surprised to discover that Mizner, Boca Raton's official city planner and major architect — the man who conceived and operated Palm Beach County's largest business during the 1920s — had very little if anything to do with money or any of the financial aspects of the Mizner Development Corporation,' said Mayhew. 'He was too focused on his T-square to ever look at the bottom line.' The exhibit is on view 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday at the museum, 71 N. Federal Highway, through May 30. Admission is $12 for adults; and $8 for seniors 65 and older and students 5 and older. For more information, call 561-395-6766 or visit Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Boca Raton history: Addison Mizner's influence on 1925 incorporation
New York Times
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Where the Fashion Elite Meet to Eat
On a recent morning, Catharine Dahm ducked into Raf's, the French-Italian bakery and restaurant on a pocket-size block of Elizabeth Street in downtown Manhattan. It was her first time there, but before the check had even arrived, she was resolved to return. 'This is going to be my regular spot while I'm here,' said Ms. Dahm, a 32-year-old fashion designer, who was in town from Paris and staying nearby. The restaurant's facade, with breads displayed in the front window, reminded her of the Old World-style cafes back home, Ms. Dahm said. At the time, she didn't realize she would be inducting herself into a contingent of regulars who hail from the worlds of fashion, design and media. Unlike its buzzy NoHo neighbors Jean's and the private members club Zero Bond, where celebrity sightings make frequent fodder for social media and Page Six readers, or the nearby Milanese import Sant Ambroeus, known to locals for its 'see and be seen' vibe, Raf's maintains a substantially lower profile. But since inheriting the space that was the longtime home to Parisi Bakery, a supplier to many of the city's top eateries, the spot has discreetly established itself as a stylish yet unpretentious refuge for fashion world fixtures to congregate on and off duty. Despite its close orbit of scene-y and in-demand restaurants — there's also Estela, which once hosted President Barack Obama; Emilio's Ballato, where tourists line up for tables nightly; and the go-big-or-go-home-hungry bravado of Torrisi — Raf's has managed to thrive as a clubroom for the fashion crowd while mostly flying under the radar of social media. Last week, the restaurant hosted a dinner party to celebrate the release of i-D magazine's inaugural issue under new ownership. Among the 35 guests joining the editor in chief, Thom Bettridge, and Karlie Kloss, whose media company has acquired the magazine, were the model Devyn Garcia, the stylist Stella Greenspan and the Luar fashion designer Raul Lopez. 'I grew up in New York,' said Mr. Bettridge, a regular since the restaurant's opening days. 'It reminds me of the feeling of some of those '90s-era restaurants where there's this kind of buzzy vibe, but it also feels like home — like Odeon or Pastis.' The luxury e-commerce retailer Net-a-Porter, Cultured magazine and the fashion label Proenza Schouler have also hosted dinner parties and events at Raf's, where waiters nimbly zigzag among the dining room's snug 11 tables. On weekdays, it has become the favored canteen for magazine tastemakers, including the Interview editor in chief Mel Ottenberg, and designers and fashion insiders with offices in nearby SoHo. 'At one point, I felt like I was there for a lunch or breakfast meeting two or three times a week,' said Isabella Isbiroglu, a director of global communications at the fashion label Khaite. The wood-fired ovens, an elemental feature of the restaurant long predating Parisi Bakery, have been around since 1935, when a young immigrant from Sicily named Angelina Bivona opened Angie's Italian & French Bakery Cafe. Angie's was never really a French bakery, though. Raf's owners, the twin sisters Nicole and Jennifer Vitagliano, explain that the curious descriptor was a way of sidestepping the anti-Italian immigrant sentiment of that time. 'She called it French-Italian to make it sound fancier,' Nicole Vitagliano said. The sisters, native New Yorkers who grew up in an Italian American household, had found a property tax photograph revealing the bakery's storefront while researching the building's history. 'That photo ended up informing our entire concept,' Nicole Vitagliano said. 'Calling it French-Italian when there was nothing French about it spoke to us.' Today Raf's front window signage has the same phrasing, while the interiors bear a European cafe-society aesthetic. It's a little Parisian, a little more Italian, with servers nattily attired in pajama-style tops. There's a pink marble bar, saffron velvet banquettes and a frescoed ceiling with a cloud-filled sky hovering over the warmly lit room. Flash photography is a no-no in the dining room. 'It's distracting,' Jennifer Vitagliano said. 'We take our guest experience very seriously, and when there's a flash, it's like suddenly everyone stops.' The consequent shortage of social media content is fine by its owners. 'We like to see people of influence in here, not influencers,' Jennifer Vitagliano said. To her, that means guests like Patti Smith and Lauren Hutton, longtime New Yorkers whom she remembers seeing at the Noho Star, a bygone neighborhood institution. The sisters, 40, who named Raf's in honor of their grandmother, and Nicole Vitagliano's daughter, also own and operate the Musket Room, a Michelin-starred restaurant one block south, and the Levantine-inspired Cafe Zaffri in the newly opened Twenty-Two hotel and private members club. While Jennifer Vitagliano has spent most of her career in food and restaurants, her twin sister previously pursued fashion, working at BlackBook magazine and as a stylist. 'A lot of our friends are still in fashion,' she said. It's a loyal crowd, she attests, albeit one with high aesthetic standards. Jennifer Vitagliano also credits a steadfast sisterhood with the restaurant's success. 'Because we're women running this restaurant, which still feels kind of unique to our industry, there's been a lot of support from female designers in particular.' Maria McManus, who says she believes supporting socially conscious female-founded businesses is 'more important than ever,' is one such designer. 'I see the dinner table as the female equivalent of the men-only golf course, and the Raf's women embody this,' she said. Maintaining a female-led business is uppermost in the sisters' vision. 'We think that should be more commonplace,' Nicole Vitagliano said. Mary Attea and Camari Mick, the chefs at Raf's, lead their other restaurants as well, and 75 percent of their managerial positions are currently held by women. How long can an establishment with a fashionable following really remain inconspicuous? Ms. Isbiroglu, from Khaite, has already noticed a shift. 'It is funny, because now when I have breakfast meetings, I'll walk in and see someone, and it's like, Oh, normally we bump into each other at Sant Ambroeus, but now we're finding ourselves here.' At the i-D party, Mr. Bettridge brushed off concern. 'It's not this runway vibe, with everyone watching when you walk in,' he said. To some extent, seeing familiar faces is an intentional aspect of the restaurant's charm. 'When you come here, you know you're going to run into people,' Jennifer Vitagliano said. She and her sister still oversee the nightly bookings to ensure a healthy balance of regulars and new faces. But she dismissed the notion of being SoHo's latest hot spot. 'We're trying to create something more timeless,' she said. 'Calling us a trendy place would be the worst thing.'
