Whitehall stands beside Lake Worth in Palm Beach, Florida, a short distance from the Atlantic shore. Henry Morrison Flagler commissioned the residence as a winter home for himself and his third wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler. Completed in 1902, it was designed by the New York architectural firm Carrère and Hastings, whose work gave the house a formal Beaux-Arts character. Today the estate is preserved as the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, where visitors can read the building as both a home and a monument to the ambitions of the Gilded Age.
The scale is immediately visible in the approach: a broad façade, classical columns and a central entrance lead into the Grand Hall, where a double marble staircase organizes the interior. The effect is ceremonial, but Whitehall was not conceived as a public palace. It was a private household with rooms for entertaining, family life and staff, set within the landscape of a new Florida resort. Looking closely at the transitions between grand rooms and domestic spaces makes the house more legible than a quick walk through its most ornate interiors.
