Mar-a-Lago: The House America Gave Back

In December of nineteen eighty, the United States Congress passed an act to return a house. Palm Beach, January nineteen twenty-seven: a hundred and twenty-six rooms on a strip of sand running ocean to lake. Seven million dollars. Six hundred workers. Thirty-six thousand Spanish tiles, some fired in the fifteenth century. Marble pulled out of a Cuban castle for the dining room floor. And an exterior of stone shipped from Genoa and chosen because it weathers fast she wanted the house to look ancient on the day it opened. Marjorie Merriweather Post inherited a cereal company at twenty-seven and built it into General Foods. But the world that made a house like this possible was already dissolving underneath her. Income tax compounding. Estate taxes splitting fortunes that had passed whole. And after the war, the staff of dozens who made fifty-eight bedrooms function walking out into factory and office work that paid better. A palace stopped being an asset and became a permanent bill. So she went looking for an institution to take it. Hillwood, her Washington estate, she handed to the public and it is a museum to this day. For Mar-a-Lago she wanted something larger a winter White House for American presidents. She got within one signature. Richard Nixon had to sign. He never did. Post died in September nineteen seventy-three; Nixon resigned the following August. The house passed to the federal government with no official status at all. Then Washington met the arithmetic she had absorbed privately for forty-six years. A million dollars a year in upkeep. A site that could not be secured open water on two sides, under the flight path of an international airport. No administration ever used it. On the twenty-third of December, nineteen eighty, Congress passed an act to give it back. It sold five years later for a fraction of its construction cost. She offered the house to her country and her country declined. Forty years later it became exactly what she had asked for, by a route she never chose and could not have imagined. When you look at Mar-a-Lago, what do you see a private palace, a rejected gift, a national embarrassment, or something else? And which American house should we open up next? If you love deep-dive history and architecture, hit like and subscribe. Your support lets us dig through archives, wills, and acts of Congress to follow what really happened to these houses. Copyright & Fair Use Disclaimer This video is an educational history documentary created for commentary, criticism and research. Some archival photos and footage are used under the principles of Fair Use (Section 107, U.S. Copyright Act) for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. #MaraLago #GildedAge #MarjorieMerriweatherPost #PalmBeach #Architecture #Documentary #AmericanHistory