Palm Beach as a winter resort (1890s–1910s)
During the final decade of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, Palm Beach transformed from a sparsely settled barrier island into one of America's premier winter destinations, drawing wealthy families from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia who sought warm weather and social prestige during the coldest months of the year. This transformation reshaped not only the island itself but also the development of the adjacent mainland community that would become West Palm Beach, creating a regional economy and social culture oriented almost entirely around the winter season and the tastes of Gilded Age elites.
Origins of Palm Beach as a Winter Destination
The foundations of Palm Beach as a resort community were laid gradually during the late nineteenth century. By the early 1890s, the island had already developed a recognizable community structure, with several hotels, established businesses, and a growing population of winter residents who returned year after year.[1] What had begun as a pioneer settlement — characterized by homesteaders, early agricultural ventures, and modest accommodations — gave way to something far more deliberate and exclusive as the decade progressed. The pioneer era ended as investment, infrastructure, and social ambition reshaped the island's character entirely.
The geography of Palm Beach made it an appealing candidate for winter resort development. The island sits along Florida's southeastern Atlantic coast, separated from the mainland by Lake Worth, and enjoys a subtropical climate that offered a reliable escape from northern winters. As rail connections to South Florida expanded in the 1890s, the journey from cities like New York and Philadelphia became practical for those who could afford it, and the island's physical isolation from the mainland contributed to a sense of exclusivity that wealthy visitors found attractive.
The Rise of Grand Estates and Mansions
The 1890s saw a shift in how wealth was displayed in Palm Beach. Ostentatiously grand mansions became the fashion during this period, reflecting the broader Gilded Age tendency among the American upper class to express social standing through architectural scale and opulence.[2] On Palm Beach, this impulse found expression in large winter homes built along the oceanfront and the shores of Lake Worth, properties that their owners occupied for only a few months each year but that represented enormous investments of capital and craftsmanship.
Among the most remarked-upon properties of the era and its legacy was Mar-a-Lago, a 115-room home constructed on the island during a later phase of this same culture of grand residential building.[3] The ambitions behind such a structure — a private residence of more than a hundred rooms — were rooted in the social logic that had taken hold in the 1890s, when the size and grandeur of a winter home signaled a family's place in the hierarchy of American wealth. Palm Beach, with its compact island setting and concentrated population of the very rich, became the venue where such signals were most carefully read and most fiercely contested.
Wealthy families from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were the primary drivers of this residential building boom, establishing Palm Beach as one of America's premier winter colonies during the period.[4] These families brought with them the social customs, domestic staffs, and expectations of urban luxury that had defined their lives in northern cities, and they expected Palm Beach to accommodate those expectations fully. The result was a community that, for roughly three to four months each year, functioned as an extension of the social worlds of New York's upper East Side or Boston's Back Bay, transplanted to a subtropical setting.
Hotels and the Accommodation Economy
Private mansions were only part of the picture. The hotel industry played a central role in establishing Palm Beach as a winter resort, particularly in the early years before the construction of private estates had reached its full extent. By the early 1890s, the island already supported several hotels catering to winter visitors, and these establishments formed the social and commercial core of the seasonal community.[5]
The hotel economy of Palm Beach was characterized from an early period by scarcity and high prices during the winter season. Rooms were difficult to obtain and expensive to rent, reflecting the concentration of demand among visitors who had the means to pay premium rates and the desire to spend the winter months on the island.[6] This dynamic — scarce supply meeting wealthy, inelastic demand — defined the accommodation market throughout the resort era and beyond.
The winter season itself followed a rhythm that was social as much as climatic. It typically concluded around Easter, when the wealthiest visitors departed for their northern homes and the island's population contracted sharply.[7] This seasonal structure imposed a particular character on Palm Beach's economy and social life: intense, compressed activity during the winter months, followed by a long period of relative quiet. Hotels, businesses, and domestic staffs organized their entire operations around this calendar.
Palm Beach and West Palm Beach: A Relationship Defined by the Resort Economy
The development of Palm Beach as a winter resort had direct and profound consequences for the mainland community across Lake Worth. West Palm Beach grew in large part to service the needs of the resort island — providing housing for workers, space for commerce and industry that the exclusive island did not want within its boundaries, and a transportation hub connecting Palm Beach to the broader world.
The labor demands of the resort economy were substantial. The grand mansions required domestic staff; the hotels needed workers of every kind; the social calendar of the wealthy winter residents created demand for tradespeople, entertainers, and suppliers of every description. Much of this workforce lived on the mainland rather than on the island itself, and their presence shaped the development of West Palm Beach in ways that remained visible long after the Gilded Age resort culture had evolved.
The physical and social separation between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach — the wealthy island and the working mainland — was a defining feature of the region from its earliest days as a resort. This division was not accidental but was rather the product of deliberate choices by the island's wealthy residents and landowners, who wished to maintain Palm Beach as a space defined by wealth, leisure, and exclusivity. The mainland served as a necessary counterpart, providing the infrastructure and labor that made the island's lifestyle possible while remaining at a comfortable remove from it.
Social Life and the Winter Season
The social life of Palm Beach during the resort era was intensive and highly structured. The winter season brought together families from the highest levels of American society, and the island's compact geography meant that these families lived in close proximity, moving through the same hotels, clubs, and social venues for months at a time. The result was a social world of considerable intensity, governed by well-understood hierarchies of wealth, family background, and social connection.
Wealthy families from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia dominated the social landscape, bringing with them the rivalries, alliances, and customs of their home cities and reconfiguring them in the Palm Beach setting.[8] The construction of ever-larger and more elaborate mansions was one expression of these social dynamics, as families competed to display wealth and taste through their winter residences.
The social calendar of the winter season was dense with events — dinners, receptions, sporting activities, and the various rituals of upper-class social life that had been transplanted from northern cities. The season's conclusion at Easter marked not just a climatic transition but a social one, as the assembled community dispersed back to its various home cities and the particular social world of Palm Beach dissolved until the following winter.
Legacy and Long-Term Influence
The patterns established during the 1890s and 1910s proved remarkably durable. Palm Beach's identity as an exclusive winter resort, defined by grand private homes, expensive hotels, and a social world centered on the American wealthy, persisted through the twentieth century and remains a recognizable feature of the island's character. The seasonal rhythms of the resort era — the winter influx, the Easter departure — continued to structure life on the island long after the Gilded Age itself had passed.
The relationship between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach, established during the resort era, also persisted in its essential character. The mainland city continued to serve as a commercial, residential, and logistical base for the island's economy, even as both communities grew and diversified over the decades. The cultural and social distance between the two communities — one wealthy and exclusive, the other more diverse and economically varied — remained a feature of the region's identity.
For the history of West Palm Beach specifically, the resort era of the 1890s through 1910s was formative in the most fundamental sense. The city's founding, its early growth, and its basic economic and social character were all shaped by its role as the mainland counterpart to the exclusive winter resort island across Lake Worth. Understanding Palm Beach's rise as a winter destination is therefore inseparable from understanding the origins of West Palm Beach itself, and the history of the two communities is best read as a single, intertwined story rather than two separate narratives.
The grand mansion culture of the Gilded Age, the scarcity and expense of winter accommodations, the social world of wealthy northern families spending their winters in subtropical Florida — all of these elements combined to create a regional identity that proved powerful enough to endure across more than a century of change. The resort era of the 1890s and 1910s laid the foundations upon which both communities continued to build.