The Breakers Hotel

The Breakers Hotel is a historic Italian Renaissance Revival-style oceanfront resort located at 1 South County Road in Palm Beach, Florida, directly across Lake Worth Lagoon from West Palm Beach. One of America's most iconic resorts, The Breakers sits on 140 acres of oceanfront property on the island of Palm Beach, and was founded in 1896 by magnate Henry M. Flagler. The current structure is the third incarnation of the hotel, having opened in December 1926 following two earlier structures on the same site that burned down in 1903 and 1925. The Breakers Hotel is significant for being the last remaining structure of the Flagler System Hotel complex that once included the Royal Poinciana Hotel, as well as the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine. Today, the resort stands as one of the defining landmarks of the Palm Beach County coastline and a touchstone of Gilded Age hospitality culture in South Florida.

Origins and Founding

In 1885, Flagler acquired a site and began the construction of his first hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. Ever the entrepreneur, he continued to build south toward Palm Beach, buying and building Florida railroads and rapidly extending lines down the state's east coast. As the Florida East Coast Railroad opened the region to development and tourism, Flagler continued to acquire or construct resort hotels along the route. In 1893, Flagler announced plans to extend the Florida East Coast Railroad to the isolated area of Lake Worth and construct the Hotel Royal Poinciana on the lake's eastern shore. From its opening in 1894, the Royal Poinciana eventually became the world's largest hotel, stretching more than 1,800 feet along Lake Worth.

The Palm Beach Inn, which opened on January 16, 1896, was fully booked for most of that first season. The hotel was smaller and quieter than the vast Royal Poinciana and overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike the Royal Poinciana Hotel, which sat along the Lake Worth Lagoon, the Palm Beach Inn was an oceanfront hotel, the first of its kind south of Daytona Beach. Flagler extended the Florida East Coast Railway to Miami and built the Port of Palm Beach, a 1,000-foot pier off the Palm Beach Inn, which allowed travel via steamship to Nassau, Havana, and Key West.

Instead of asking for rooms at the main hotel, many regular Palm Beach guests asked for rooms "down by the breakers." The name stuck, and when Flagler doubled the size of the Palm Beach Inn for the 1901 season, he renamed the hotel The Breakers. By the early 1900s, the hotel property also included accommodations for 600 guests, cottages, a casino, a saltwater bath, and the first 18-hole golf course in Florida.

The Two Great Fires

The wooden structure that Flagler so successfully built was destined to fall victim to fire — not once, but twice. On June 9, 1903, as workers were enlarging the wooden building for the fourth time in less than a decade, The Breakers burned down. During the fourth expansion, fire broke out in the casino kitchen and became visible as far away as Fort Pierce and Miami. Efforts by the East Coast and West Palm Beach fire departments proved futile, with the hotel, a cottage, the casino, and several nearby stores burning down. Losses from the fire totaled approximately $730,000 in 1903 dollars.

Just two weeks after the fire, the 73-year-old Flagler announced that The Breakers would not only be rebuilt, it would also open for the upcoming winter season. On February 1, 1904, The Breakers reopened to universal acclaim. The new Breakers, a rambling four-story, colonial-style building constructed entirely of wood, contained 425 rooms and suites. Room rates started at four dollars a night and included three meals a day. The guest register read like a "Who's Who" of early twentieth-century America — Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Astors, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan vacationed alongside United States presidents and European nobility.

The rebuilt wooden structure did not last long. On March 18, 1925, twelve years after Flagler's death, tragedy struck The Breakers once again when another fire destroyed the all-wood structure. Damage totals from the fire ranged from $2.5 million to as much as $7 million. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the Royal Poinciana Hotel accommodated approximately 450 guests and 300 employees of The Breakers and the Palm Beach Hotel. On March 22, four days after the fire, Florida East Coast Hotel vice president H. E. Bemis announced the company's intentions of rebuilding The Breakers, with plans to abandon wooden construction for fireproof concrete.

Architecture of the Current Structure

For the new hotel's architects, the Florida East Coast Hotel Company selected the firm Schultze and Weaver, which later designed the Waldorf-Astoria, Pierre, and Sherry Netherlands Hotels in New York City. For the hotel's architectural style, Schultze and Weaver selected the Italian Renaissance. During an earlier trip to Rome, Leonard Schultze had admired the Villa Medici (1575) and used that building as the basis for The Breakers' facade.

On December 4, 1925, the New York City-based Turner Construction Company signed a contract to build the new Breakers, and construction began in January 1926. The seven-story hotel had to be built, furnished, and landscaped to open just after Christmas 1926, the start of the Palm Beach season. More than 1,200 construction workers labored on The Breakers around the clock to meet the opening date. Seventy-five artisans were brought from Italy to complete the magnificent paintings on the ceilings of the lobby and first-floor public rooms. The immense structure was completed for $7 million in a scant 11½ months.

The hotel opened showcasing a 200-foot-long main lobby with an arched, hand-painted ceiling; a vast Florentine Dining Room, richly decorated with a beamed ceiling modeled after the Palazzo Davanzati (circa 1400) in Florence; magnificent North and South Loggias; and shaded terraces and landscaped patios. The lushly landscaped 1,040-foot, palm-lined main drive leads to the resort's Florentine Fountain, modeled after the Boboli Gardens in Florence. The hotel's breathtaking lobby is influenced by the Great Hall of the Palazzo Carrega in Genoa (circa 1560).

The Italian Renaissance-style hotel features a 200-foot-long lobby. The arched ceiling was hand-painted by 75 Italian artisans, and the lobby contains a 161-by-25-foot carpet with a colorful botanical motif. The Breakers was entered on the National Register of Historic Places on August 14, 1973.

World War II: Ream General Hospital

One of the most remarkable chapters in the hotel's history unfolded during World War II, when the resort was requisitioned by the United States military. On December 12, 1942, the U.S. Army Air Force transformed the grand hotel into Ream General Hospital. For the next 18 months, the wounded soldiers of World War II replaced America's wealthiest socialites. The luxurious Breakers Hotel was converted to a military hospital in anticipation of casualties from the Allied invasion of Africa.

The U.S. Army transformed the ballroom into a recreation hall, the Coconut Grove room into a dental clinic, the south loggia into an officers' lounge, and the mezzanine section into operating rooms, while also creating a maternity ward where more than a dozen babies were born. At its peak, Ream General Hospital included 400 staffers and approximately 750 patients, many of whom suffered injuries during the North African campaign.

The hospital hosted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and then-Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman in 1944, who toured the facility and chatted with patients. About three dozen "Breakers Babies" were born during this period, according to the hotel's official historian, James Ponce.

An agreement filed with the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida on September 26, 1944, stated that Ream General Hospital would be returned to civilian use on December 10, with the Florida East Coast Hotel Company receiving $800,000 in compensation. Thereafter, Palm Beach architect and engineer John Volk and two Miami firms quickly restored The Breakers, allowing some guests to check in as early as December 24 but not fully reopening until January 7, 1945.

Modern Era, Ownership, and Amenities

The property is still a family-owned business, bequeathed to Flagler's third wife, Mary Lily Kenan, and later her family, the Kenans, when she died. It is one of the few family-owned, independent hotels in the world — a rarity in today's world of mergers and acquisitions. Flagler System, Inc. (FSI) is the privately held parent company and original family ownership of The Breakers Palm Beach, Breakers West Country Club, One North Breakers Row, and various commercial real estate properties on the island.

The Kenan family invests an average of $30 million annually into maintaining the property — restoring or improving the guest experience. In 1995, the hotel completed a five-year, $75 million renovation program.

The resort features 534 guest rooms, including 72 suites — among them the Imperial and Royal Poinciana Suites. Each room offers views of the Atlantic or resort grounds, décor inspired by Palm Beach's casually chic lifestyle, and complimentary high-speed WiFi. The Flagler Club, a 13-room, eight-suite boutique hotel within the resort, is located on the sixth and seventh floors and offers restricted access for guests.

The resort offers 36 holes of golf, spa services, and on-site designer stores. The resort features eight world-class restaurants and an Ocean Fitness facility of 6,000 square feet. Across the resort grounds, the hotel implements ecologically friendly practices that conserve resources and protect the environment. The Breakers is committed to expanding and enhancing its environmental programs to protect and preserve natural resources. As a modern organization, it employs more than 2,400 people.

The Breakers has received recognition from organizations and media agencies such as the American Automobile Association, the American Institute of Architects, Forbes Travel Guide, and U.S. News & World Report. The Breakers bills itself as the oldest continuously operating business in Florida.