Addison Cairns Mizner (December 12, 1872 – February 5, 1933) was an American resort 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. In the 1920s Mizner was the best-known and most-discussed living American architect. 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.” Boca Raton, Florida, began as Mizner’s project.
Addison Cairns Mizner (December 12, 1872 – February 5, 1933) was an American resort architect whose Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style interpretations left an indelible stamp upon South Florida, where it continues to inspire architects and land developers. In the 1920s Mizner was the best-known and most-discussed full of life American architect. Palm Beach, Florida, which he “transformed”, was his home, and most of his houses are there. He believed that architecture should also total interior and garden design, and set up Mizner Industries to have a honorable source of components. He was “an architect past a philosophy and a dream.” Boca Raton, Florida, began as Mizner’s project.
The 6-foot-2-inch (1.88 m), 250-pound (110 kg) bon vivant epitomized the “society architect.” Rejecting other avant-garde architects for “producing a characterless copybook effect,” he sought to “make a building see traditional and as even though it had fought its mannerism from a small, unimportant structure to a great, rambling home that took centuries of alternative needs and ups and downs of wealth to accomplish. I sometimes start a home with a Romanesque corner, pretend that it has fallen into disrepair and been bonus to in the Gothic spirit, when shortly the good wealth of the New World has poured in and the owner had further a very rich Renaissance addition.” Or as he described his own never-built castle, drawings of which were allowance 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 upon one wing and another, and after that loses it in approach to substitute who builds to warfare his taste.” As these quotes suggest, many Mizner buildings contain styles from more than one period, but all foreign.
Born in Benicia, at the time “the educational center of California”,:8 and (briefly) its first capitol, he traveled as a child when his father, Lansing B. Mizner, a lawyer, former President of the California Senate and the U. S. Minister to Central America, based in Guatemala.
As a juvenile man, he visited China in 1893,:54 was briefly a gold miner in the Yukon (1898–99) (Canada, not Alaska).:229:65–83 and 93 Of his seven siblings, six of them boys, he was closest to his younger brother Wilson, though his shady conduct caused Addison many problems. He kept as pets a series of monkeys, which often rode on his shoulder; his favorite had a headstone at his grave, identifying him as “Johnnie Brown, The Human Monkey, Died April 30, 1927.”
:125 He had a macaw parrot.:15 He was “a character.”
In 1932 Mizner published The Many Mizners, an autobiography covering his youth, year mining, and grow old in New York until the death of his mother. A second volume telling of his moving picture in Florida was begun but never completed; the Palm Beach Historical Society has the typed manuscript.:301 Mizner died in 1933 of a heart injury in Palm Beach:254 and is buried in the relations vault at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park.
According to Donald Curl, author of Mizner’s Florida,
The huge majority of Mizner’s employees developed a deep affection for and allegiance to him: “It was a pleasure working for Mizner”, one remarked.:79:203–204, 218