Mar-a- Thanks to the now-famous FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, Lago has dominated the news in recent weeks.
But the lavish estate had a colorful and lengthy past before it served as a storage facility for official records. And a rich heiress is where it all starts.
On Thanksgiving in 2018, former president Donald Trump addresses the media from Mar-a-Lago.
Heiress to the Postum Cereal Company, which later changed its name to “General Foods Corporation,” was Marjorie Merriweather Post. After her father passed away, Post took over the business at the age of 27, becoming one of the wealthiest women in the world at the time.
She gave the property in Palm Beach a suitable name. Mar-a-Lago means from the Sea to the Lake. This Spanish name was chosen due to the property being in between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth.
Mar-a-Lago was constructed in the 1920s for roughly $7 million, which is equivalent to more than $100 million today.
Just one of her estates was Mar-a-Lago. The Hillwood Estate in Washington, D.C., which is now a museum, was another prominent residence owned by Post.
Mar-a-four-year Lago’s construction process cost Post around $7 million, which is equivalent to more over $100 million today. Homes like Mar-a-Lago typified the Roaring 20s, a period of soaring consumption and affluence.
Michael Luongo, a freelance writer and PhD candidate at Purdue, researched the Post Family Papers at the University of Michigan and wrote about Mar-a-past Lago’s for Smithsonian Magazine.
“Mar-a-Lago was extravagant, even by Palm Beach standards,” he wrote.
In 1937, Marjorie Merriweather Post hunts grouse in Scotland.
The mansion is enormous, and the land has roughly 20 acres. It has 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms, and it is more than 37,000 square feet. 36,000 antique Spanish tiles, imported Italian stone, hundreds of square feet of marble, gold-plated fittings, and gold leafing are all used in its decoration.
As a hostess at heart, Post constructed Mar-a-Lago because her previous Florida house “got too tiny for her gatherings,” according to her New York Times obituary.
Mar-a-Lago has more than 37,000 square feet of space, 58 bedrooms, and 33 baths on over 20 acres of property.
Royals and diplomats, lavish parties, and charitable events like the International Red Cross Ball were all sponsored by Post. And a lot of this was accessible to the nearby Palm Beach neighborhood of Mar-a-Lago.
She was also quite concerned about making sure the less fortunate were invited to events so they could take in, say, musical performances, Luongo said. “She a lady of resources, quite affluent, astute, and aware of the significance of her place in society.”
Luongo claims that in 1929, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus visiteperform for disadvantaged kids as a fundraiser for charity. She placed a high value on these events raising money for the charity she supported.
According to Luongo, “She discovered strategies to guarantee that expenditures were cut for a smaller firm.” She made certain that, if she opened her doors to the public, doing so would advance society in general as well as benefit charities or individuals from less privileged backgrounds.
The Department of the Interior designated Mar-a-Lago as a national historic site in 1969, and it was subsequently added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Mar-a-building Lago’s process took around four years, and it was finished in 1927.
When Post passed away in 1973, she left Mar-a-Lago to the federal government as a “Winter White House” for presidents and diplomats to use as a retreat.
That ultimately didn’t happen because the government thought it would be too expensive to maintain. These kinds of homes are referred to as “white elephants” – a term for a property that is so large and pricey that it becomes a burden.
“There were additional instances of similar homes, but they are no longer in existence. As preferences evolved, families sold their homes, and many could no longer afford them by the [1950s and 1960s], “explained Luongo. “For that reason, many have been destroyed throughout the years.”
When it was listed it for sale, and after many deals fell through, Donald J. Trump, a prominent real estate developer at the time, joined the picture.
For $5 million, Trump bought the property from the foundation in December 1985. Additionally, he spent additional millions on the antiques at Mar-a-Lago.
Then, in 2019, at the Mar-a-Lago resort, President Donald Trump conducts a video call to the soldiers deployed globally.
Getty Images/Nicholas Klamm
According to Luongo, “He did obtain a lovely place for a very, very cheap amount of money.”
“Would that home have been spared or demolished without Donald Trump? So, that’s something more to consider “said he. But it’s a lovely piece of history and has always been a piece of history, you know.
Trump converted his private house into “The Mar-a-Lago Club” in 1995, where membership costs $200,000 at first.
In 2017, the former leader of the United States began referring to Mar-a-Lago as his own “Winter White House.” Inside Mar-a-Lago, which served as the setting for press conferences and events in the White House, served as a reminder of Post’s power. Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan, and Xi Jinping, the president of China, were among the international leaders that Trump entertained at his residence when he was president.
At the conclusion of a joint news conference at Mar-a-Lago in 2018, Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, clasp hands.
Trump relocated permanently to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office. However, Mar-a-Lago has most recently been in the news because of an FBI inquiry to take records from the resort.
Mar-a-Lago is in many ways Post’s legacy, and it is now now a part of former President Trump’s legacy. It’s difficult to predict Post’s current thoughts on Mar-a-Lago.
Luongo remarked, “I can’t be in her head, but I believe in many respects she would be fascinated. “I believe she would be horrified because she utilized her position to promote the United States, concepts of equality, and notions of diplomacy,” the author said.
In a sense, Post achieved her goal of seeing Mar-a-Lago continue to serve as a “Winter White House.”
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