The Tragic Fall of Mizner's Boca Raton Land Boom

How did Addison Mizner sell Boca Raton's future for millions— and what did that promise cost the people who believed it? In 1925, a small Florida farming town was offered a grand new identity: the Venice of the Atlantic. Addison Mizner, the architect who had transformed Palm Beach, promised a thousand-room hotel, golf courses and gondolas along Camino Real. According to the Boca Raton Historical Society, his company took in more than $2 million on the first day of sales. Much of the town buyers imagined was still a drawing. Follow the buses from Worth Avenue to the sales offices, the famous names behind the advertisements, and the installment payments that kept construction going. Irving Berlin helped back the company while writing music for The Cocoanuts, a Broadway comedy about the Florida land boom. At the Cloister Inn, guests gathered for a glittering opening night. Beyond its courtyards lay a question: how long could tomorrow's payments cover today's bills—and why is that hotel still welcoming guests a century later? Historical society collections, period advertisements, a farmer's diary and published histories guide this account of Boca Raton's rise, its land company's troubles and the city that followed. There is room here for Mizner's ambition, for the buyers, workers and neighbors who bore its costs, and for you to draw your own conclusions. 0:00 The Small Print 3:33 Before the Resort 6:12 The Architect Palm Beach Trusted 10:03 Names on the Letterhead 12:38 Two Million in a Day 15:21 The Boom on Paper 19:16 A Boulevard for Gondolas 23:03 When Advertising Became a Contract 26:25 Opening Night at the Cloister 30:43 The Second Payment 34:50 The Hurricane of 1926 41:31 The Price of the Dream 45:09 The Waterboy's Club 51:15 The Mizner Brothers' Last Years 56:14 The Town That Stayed 1:02:52 A Few Years Hence 1:04:49 The Cloister at One Hundred Selected sources Boca Raton Historical Society — Addison Mizner (n.d.) Boca Raton Historical Society — Mizner's Dream: The Built and the Unbuilt (n.d.) Historical Society of Palm Beach County — The Great Architects: Mizner in Boca Raton (n.d.) Alexander O. Boulton — The Tropical Twenties (1990) State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory — Boom and Bust in Boca Raton (2019) Paul S. George — Brokers, Binders, and Builders: Greater Miami's Boom of the Mid-1920s (1986) Raymond B. Vickers — Panic in Paradise: Florida's Banking Crash of 1926 (1994) Boca Raton Historical Society — Tales from the Archives: Storm of '26 Revisited (n.d.) Holly Baltz — Celebrating our History: Inn-side story (Cloister Inn at 100) (2026) This documentary is not financial advice. Some scenes are illustrated with reconstructions. #AddisonMizner #BocaRaton #FinancialHistory About this film: some scenes are AI-generated reconstructions, used only where no original footage or photographs exist, and they are marked on screen as reconstructions. The narration is an AI voice. The script is researched and fact-checked against the sources listed above.