Saturday, October 25, 2008
By AUGUSTUS MAYHEW
Special to the Daily News
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The centerpiece of a large asphalt parking lot, the Royal Poinciana Plaza's north and south buildings feature matching two-story porticos with upper-story horizontal glass window bands and molded pediments set on columns finished with composite capitals.
Palm Beach architecture's uncommon mix of artifice and authenticity transforms the island's houses into incomparable showplaces, none more eclectic, fantastic and unexpected than those inspired and fashioned from early 19th century Regency architecture.
Unlike the Mediterranean and Caribbean styles that are rooted to the island's history, location and climate, Palm Beach's posh Regency style is widely considered an interpretation of England's stately Late Georgian aristocratic facades, illustrated by architect John Volk's designs for the Royal Poinciana Plaza and Royal Poinciana Playhouse, designer-builder Clarence Mack's houses and developer Robert Gottfried's stately formal compositions, as designed by architect John B. Gosman.
Despite the number of Palm Beach houses characterized as Regency, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission recommended the Palm Beach Town Council designate the Royal Poinciana Plaza and Playhouse as local landmarks, it probably never realized the town had never historically designated a property as significant for its Regency style.
"After a review of the local register of landmarks and a re-look at the Florida Master Site File for all our landmarks, none are listed as Regency," said Jane Day, the town's historic preservation consultant.
And further emphasizing the Plaza and Playhouse's unprecedented standing, according to state and national architectural scholars, a 20th-century Regency-styled building has never been historically designated in either Florida or the United States.
Regency's rules
"I have never seen the term Regency used in regard to post-World War II architecture, or even prewar architecture in Florida, that would be labeled as Neoclassical Revival," said William Carl Shriver, the registrar for the National Register of Historic Places at Florida's Bureau of Historic Preservation.
"I know that I have never used the term in regard to buildings in Florida and do not think it is one of the classifications used by the Florida Master Site File," Shriver added. The Florida Master Site File is an archive of the state's more than 150,000 recorded prehistoric and historical cultural resources. It is maintained by the Bureau of Historic Preservation of the Division of Historical Resources.
Properties are designated "historic" by state and national organizations according to the integrity of their design and the period in which they were created.
According to the National Trust's documentation guidelines, the Regency style refers only to Early Republic properties built between 1780 and 1830, a transitional movement between the Georgian and Victorian era that approximates the term of the prince regent under George III and, following his father's death, his reign as George IV.
Hence, Savannah and Charleston's early 19th century Regency buildings are historically designated as Regency.
While the National Trust acknowledges Neoclassical Revival as an early 20th century design, it cites only the following postwar design styles as historic: International, Wrightian, Brutalism, California or Ranch, Modern and Deco Moderne.
As a result, Regency is not a viable postwar design classification suitable for nomination to the National Register solely on the basis of its architectural design.
"You are in some uncharted terrain in the 1950s and beyond. This 1950s interpretation of Regency style was explored in the design of private residences and interiors in both Palm Beach, as well as Beverly Hills, and is a post-World War II phenomenon," said Jeff Burden, architectural historian for the National Trust.
A consultant for the Center of Antique Architecture, Paris, and the Villa Medici, Rome, Burden is an architect and an archaeologist, the only American architect to have been a Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies, the American Academy, Rome, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
"What you see in these Palm Beach residences was an interest in the slim elegance of English Regency style of the early 19th century. To date, it is a somewhat less touched-upon area of scholarship," Burden said.
Style explained
The Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation report makes numerous references to the Plaza and the Playhouse as examples of Regency architecture.
In 2006, ARCOM unanimously accepted a demolition report for a Clarence Mack-built Regency-style house on South County Road, finding the property "without any historical or redeeming architectural features to justify preserving the residence."
And further, ARCOM explains the style as follows, "The so-called Regency style of Palm Beach has come to mean a one-story, symmetrical flat-roofed structure with classical ornamentation, stucco banding, keystones, window surrounds, arched windows, pediments, columns, elongated windows ... "
This description does little to associate the building type with England's Regency style between 1780 and 1830, a period of powdered wigs and top hats when late Late Georgian-era designers formulated a picturesque aesthetic hybrid from an assortment of classical styles, most often traced from Grand Tour sketchbooks and inspired by the ruins at Herculaneum and Pompeii.
The Georgian royal court was renowned for masques, banquets and pageants, a style of excess more closely related to the earlier French Directoire and Empire style found during the Regency of Louis XV than Palladio's more functional and symmetrical Roman style imported a century earlier by architect Inigo Jones.
When British Regency architects were not designing a palace or gilding a hall, their best-known architectural form was expressed in multistory townhouse developments like London's Regent Park or Montpelier Crescent, Norfolk Square or Western Terrace found in Brighton, adorned with enriched pediments, elaborate pilasters, ironwork balconies and verandas.
Nearly 130 years later, Palm Beach created its own adaptation of the aristocratic Regency style. Whether it was the Phipps family's appreciation for English culture, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor effect — the influence of the era's most ubiquitous house guests — or the architect's preference to blend "trend and tradition," as expressed in the designation report, the Royal Poinciana Plaza and the Royal Poinciana Playhouse were designed as if they were a tableau vivant from Jane Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility.
The Plaza, the Playhouse and the automobile
After the Palm Beach Towers opened as the nation's largest hotel-apartment resort in 1955, Bessemer Properties Inc. proceeded with developing the adjacent vacant property into a shopping plaza and theater, to be built with a low profile that maintained the views for the multistory apartments. The Plaza's matching buildings were sited in a similar east-west configuration as The Towers' pair of H-shaped buildings. But, in contrast to the Towers, connected by a two-level center concourse that faced Cocoanut Row, the Plaza placed its side elevations onto Cocoanut Row, turning its parallel facades north and south, making it the centerpiece of an asphalt parking lot with an encircling roundabout, reflecting the postwar era's rationale that the automobile dictated commercial architectural design.
The Royal Poinciana Plaza's large plate-glass display windows and sea of asphalt ushered in Palm Beach's tail-fin era when shoppers in their Imperials or Lincoln Continentals could drive right up to a shop and park, nothing like Worth Avenue where parking was at a premium and display windows were retrofitted into jewel-box buildings.
And although the Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation report makes numerous references to the Plaza's Regency architecture, upon a more in-depth scrutiny, it may be the building's silhouette that evokes the 1820s, rather than the complex's substance and details, that are clearly 1950s.
The Plaza's bands of upper-story horizontal windows and plate-glass display windows are more suitable for West Palm Beach's Clematis Street than the Regency era's quaint shops and boutiques.
The Plaza's corresponding north and south facades are centered by two-story portico entrances detailed with composite capitals that dispel the building's historical stylistic cachet.
The interior garden walkways are lined with aluminum columnettes apropos of a 1950s suburban shopping center.
On the Playhouse's imaginative east elevation, five arched bays are painted windows with fanciful grilles curved like balconies and its scored blocks create the illusory appearance that the building is a far more complex structure than a regional theater.
As the Plaza and Playhouse neared completion, builder-developer Clarence Mack (1888-1982) planned Regent Park, a subdivision of five houses placed around a circular drive that framed a central open park in the South End, designed in a residential style closely akin to Volk's commercial Royal Poinciana Plaza.
But there was a critical difference: John Volk was an architect, whose expertise was his tailored design for clients; Clarence Mack was not an architect but a designer-builder known for his mass appeal, a former window dresser who two decades earlier had moved to Palm Beach from Cleveland, Ohio, where he was a spec builder who packaged turnkey houses.
'Tropical Empire': Clarence Mack's style
Before Clarence Mack platted Regent Park, he had built Neoclassical Revival-style houses, in a style he called Tropical Empire, on Via del Lago, Jungle Road and El Vedado.
Between 1914 and 1938, Mack design-built more than 30 houses in Lakewood and Shaker Heights, Ohio, converting pattern-book exteriors into mansions for newly minted fortunes who wanted an old-money look, interchanging various facades and doorways, detailing and altering them with his own palette of French eclectic and Georgian features.
"Though everyone still calls him an architect, I have never seen any evidence that Clarence Mack studied architecture, apprenticed as an architect or was ever actually a licensed architect in Ohio or Florida," said Ann Marie Wieland, archivist for the Cleveland Public Library, the repository for the Clarence Mack archives.
Mack's father and grandfather were builders, and having learned the trade from them, he served as his own designer and contractor, usually living in each of the houses before he sold them. He installed crystal chandeliers, Chippendale mirrors and marble mantels; planted English-style gardens; filled rooms with French and English antiques; and added powder rooms and libraries where he leather-tooled the bookends to match the woodwork.
"He had a wonderful eye and was self-taught working in the family's building business," added Wieland, whose master's thesis included a survey of Mack's work.
Mack's early Palm Beach houses were modeled on his 1920s Ohio houses, with slight modifications and facades accessorized with urns and statues. Mack furnished 320 El Vedado, the home of Benson Ford for many years, with figurines and sconces, including Wheeler Williams sculptures.
Across the street, at 319 El Vedado, he added Ionic pilasters and a lower-level garage to the facade of his popular Lakewood House, before selling it in 1940 to artist Channing Hare.
Following the success of Regent Park, Mack developed Parc Monceau, named for a late 18th century English-styled park in Paris, where he subdivided an estate-sized parcel and built seven houses formulated with the same strict geometry and decor as Regent Park.
Clarence Mack's achievements attracted builder Robert Gottfried (1926-2007), who when he first arrived in Palm Beach to work in his family's construction business, asked Mack's advice on what he should build in Palm Beach, and according to the Preservation Foundation's records, Mack told Gottfried to specialize in one particular style and make it his own.
Gottfried paid Mack the highest compliment by emulating Mack's style but synthesized less decorous exteriors with more modern, spacious interiors. Within several years, Robert Gottfried's name would be synonymous with the style — the Gottfried Regency.
Gotffried Regency
Beginning with a single house on Wells Road during the 1950s, Robert Gottfried built his signature style, in partnership with architect John B. Gosman, into a definitive Palm Beach genre, where his companies controlled almost every aspect of the house's construction, having established Palm Beach Marble & Tile, Classic Moulders, Imports Unlimited, Classic Polyroof Co. and the PaverLock Driveway Co.
Gottfried Regency, as Time magazine called it in 1981, became tantamount with the sophisticated luxury expected by new Palm Beach residents who did not want to live in barrel-tiled oversized mansions with creaky wooden floors or in multi-unit condominiums.
Gottfried's symmetrical formal facades were detailed with composites and framed by sculpted hedges, conveying a sense of restrained classicism, while beyond the double-door entrances, Gottfried introduced opulent entrance halls, Sherle Wagner bathrooms, St. Charles kitchens, silver closets, built-in security systems and oversized galleries.
In the North End, Polmer Park, Via Linda, Chateaux Drive and North Lake Way became settings for Gottfried's brand of resort living. Along Via Los Incas, Gottfried built 10 mansionettes designed to look as if they had been there forever, a style he called French Gottfried, their striking similarities evocative of Mansart's Hall of Mirrors.
The architectural visions of Volk, Mack and Gottfried were uniquely Palm Beach; their work reflects the island's unrestrained delight in mingling reality and fantasy.
For without illusion, how could Palm Beach exist?
And, however uncertain the architectural vogue of the Royal Poinciana Plaza and the Royal Poinciana Playhouse may be, if the Town Council designates them as historic, there is no doubt that the Town of Palm Beach will make history.
The National Trust's architectural historian has a possible solution.
"You may be able to create your own term — Regency Revival of the 1950s, perhaps," said Burden.
Augustus Mayhew is a local historian, author and a contributing editor to HOME magazine. He has served as chairman and vice chairman of local and regional historic preservation boards, as well as a consultant for historic preservation ordinances and was a recipient of the AIA Palm Beach chapter's Historic Preservation Award. For many years, Mr. Mayhew was chairman of Archives and Collections for the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, establishing the organization's 'Guide to the Architectural Collections.'
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