Breakers Hotel

This article is about the hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. For the hotel in Long Beach, California, see Breakers Hotel (Long Beach, California). For the hotel in Sandusky, Ohio, see Hotel Breakers.

Breakers Hotel Complex
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location:	S. County Rd., Palm Beach, Florida
Coordinates:	26°42′50″N 80°2′17″W
Area:	105 acres (42 ha)
Built:	1925
Architect:	Schultze & Weaver
Architectural style:	Renaissance Revival, Late 19th and 20th Century Revivals, Shingle Style
Governing body:	Private
NRHP Reference#:	73000598
Added to NRHP:	August 14, 1973

The Breakers Hotel is an historic hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, United States. First known as The Palm Beach Inn, it was opened on January 16, 1896 by Henry Flagler, an oil, real estate and railroad tycoon, to accommodate travelers on his Florida East Coast Railway. It occupied the beachfront portion of the grounds of the Royal Poinciana Hotel, which Flagler had opened beside Lake Worth in 1894. But because guests began requesting rooms "over by the breakers," Flagler renamed it The Breakers in 1901. The wooden hotel burned on June 9, 1903 and was rebuilt, opening on February 1, 1904. Rooms started at $4.00 a night, including 3 meals a day. Because Flagler forbade motorized vehicles on the property, patrons were delivered between the two hotels in wheeled chairs powered by employees. The grounds featured a 9-hole golf course.

But on March 18, 1925, The Breakers burned again, the fire started by an electric curling iron left on. The architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver modeled its 550-room replacement after the Villa Medici in Rome, this time working with New York based Turner Construction Company and a local well known Palm Beach contractor Eugene Hammond who worked on the Kennedy Estate and built the first theater in West Palm Beach. The contractors decided to abandon the wooden construction for fireproof concrete. Built by 1,200 construction workers, the hotel reopened on December 29, 1926 to considerable acclaim. The lobby's ceiling was painted by Alexander Bonanno, a classically trained New York City artist who taught at Cooper's Union. Today, the hotel and grounds occupy 140 acres (57 hectares) beside the Atlantic Ocean.

This Hotel influenced the Hotel Nacional in Havana Cuba.

The Breakers Hotel Complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. In 1973, the 105-acre (42 ha) listed area included 15 contributing buildings and one other contributing object.

The hotel is located at South County Road.

References

• History of The Breakers
• Florida, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, 2004, pg. 119

External links

• The Breakers Hotel
• Palm Beach County listings, Florida's Office of Cultural and Historical Programs
• "It's De Limit" Forbes article by Finn-Olaf Jones on The Breakers' architects Schultze & Weaver, April 24, 2006
• The Breakers Historical Timeline