Fully restored dining room with the original carpet.
Fireplace beyond the dining table and chairs.
Female head detail.
One of two restored sideboards.
Ceiling plaster molding and chandelier.
Henry Flagler’s Whitehall, the 75-room mansion he built as a gift to his wife, Mary Lily Kenan, became the couple’s winter retreat from 1902 until Flagler’s death in 1913. The New York Herald described it as “…grander and more magnificent than any other private dwelling in the world…” Over the years, Whitehall became a social nexus that helped establish Palm Beach as a favored winter retreat for the wealthy of the Gilded Age.
At the heart of the mansion is the magnificent dining room, designed in a French Renaissance style by the design firm Pottier and Stymus. Recently, when conservationists and museum leaders reviewed archival photos, they realized that the dining room’s ornate wooden features had originally displayed the same pale tone as a newly repaired dining set. Clearly, both had been made from extremely rare West Indian satinwood, a fact that had been obscured by a dark stain applied in the 1920s.
As of fall 2024, the dining hall had been restored to its original splendor, revealing the exquisite grain of its unique and precious satinwood interior.
