Even though I'd been to Vizcaya before--for Miami's White Party, during my circuit senior days--its daytime beauty stunned me. I guess I must have been more focused on other things.
Owner James Deering funded the vision of Paul Chalfin, his interior decorator, with family money from the International Harvester fortune. A pronounced fondness for sculpted male nudity suggests the ghosts of this rumored couple enjoyed the flesh-and-blood shenanigans I witnessed in the garden during my first visit.
Imagine throwing a party in this atrium, which first welcomed guests in the 1920s. Silent-film star Lillian Gish ("Birth of a Nation," the racist classic) was among them. She brushed past me once when the Film Society of Lincoln Center honored Claudette Colbert in 1984.
A shot of Christine from the balcony, still hung with Christmas garlands.
A view of the villa as it appears from a gazebo on Biscayne Bay.
Chris, Thom & Randy on the steps.
Here's John Singer Sargent's portrait of the master of the house. It hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The over-the-top furnishings are original.
Thom couldn't believe the size of the second-floor kitchen.
So many gorgeous details.
The stone barge in front of the villa and the Venetian bridge beggar belief. So camp!
The entrance to the garden, designed by Diego Suarez, a Colombian landscape architect. It's enormous and every bit as impressive as the villa.
There must have been gondolas once to ferry guests to the barge.
Chris peeking out from the gazebo.
The view of the barge from the gazebo.
The entrance to the garden, designed by Diego Suarez, a Colombian landscape architect. It's enormous and every bit as impressive as the villa.
Spooky, too.
This we can reproduce at the Folly!
Not one but two grottos.
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