Fit for a king, never mind an ex-president, Donald Trump's magnificent Mar-a-Lago estate in the ultra-exclusive Florida enclave of Palm Beach boasts a fascinating and at times eyebrow-raising back story. As the former leader of the free world begins a new chapter of his life in the ridiculously luxurious property, and ahead of a reported temporary move to his New Jersey golf club as Mar-a-Lago closes for the hurricane season, click or scroll through as we reveal the secrets hidden within its walls.
Mar-a-Lago was constructed between 1924 and 1927 for the flamboyant socialite, art collector and philanthropist, Marjorie Merriweather Post, who inherited her father's cereal empire in 1914 at the age of 27 following his tragic suicide. Post's fortune went on to peak at $250 million (an estimated $1.5 billion in today's money), making her one of the wealthiest women in US history, and she spared absolutely no expense on her palazzo by the sea. In 1921, Post hired renowned Gilded Age architect, Marion Sims Wyeth to design a miraculous winter retreat in Palm Beach.
The luxury-loving heiress settled on a 17-acre parcel of land between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth, hence the name – Mar-a-Lago translates from Spanish as 'sea to lake'. Post worked with Wyeth to create a fantastical 118-room Spanish-Moorish-style palace, roping in the boundary-pushing designer Joseph Urban to collaborate on the interiors. Urban had worked on everything from Egyptian palaces to Broadway sets and also designed the Palm Beach Bath and Tennis Club.
A staggering 600 workers, including 300 artisans from Europe, toiled away on the construction project. The Dorian stone used for the exterior was imported from Italy in three boat-loads, tens of thousands of antique tiles dating from as far back as the 15th century were acquired from a prominent collector and castle in Cuba. Fixtures were plated in gold, which Post thought was easier to clean. When all was said and done, the project went eight times over budget, with the final bill coming in at $7 million, a hefty $104 million in today's money.
A large chunk of the grand total was spent on the astonishingly opulent living room. The statement ceiling is an almost exact replica of the glorious 'Thousand Wing Ceiling' in Venice's Accademia and together with the walls is covered in so much gold leaf, America's entire supplies were said to have been exhausted decorating the room, which Post packed with prized antiques, including an Italian Renaissance table, 17th-century Spanish rug and silk tapestries from a Venetian palazzo.
The dining room is equally lavish. Modeled on a sala de pranzo in Rome's 16th-century Palazzo Chigi, it has a similar Italian Renaissance vibe. The enormous 4,000-pound dining table designed by Urban for the room was crafted at great expense by 15 artisans at Florence's prestigious School of the Medici, who spent a year making the remarkable piece, which was studded with colorful semi-precious stones.
Post opted for a sedate English Georgian style for the Library, which features wall panels crafted from antique British oak. In keeping with its theme, English antiques from the 18th and 19th centuries adorned the room. According to Trump's former butler, Anthony Senecal, speaking to the New York Post, the bookshelves were packed with rare first editions, which were wasted on the family who are said to have never once picked up a tome.
The property is a super-eclectic mish-mash of styles, particularly the guest and owner's bedrooms, which number 58 in total. Post and designer Joseph Urban drew on global inspiration. There was a Dutch Room decorated with antique Delft tiles, a Murano glass-adorned Venetian Room (pictured), Spanish and Portuguese Rooms. She plumped for an exceedingly ornate Louis XIV French Baroque theme for her private quarters, which incidentally is Trump's favorite style.
The Versailles Master Bedroom in the owner's quarters is pictured here in all its splendor. Over the years, the mega-mansion's diverse design elements have come to be appreciated, but that wasn't the case back in the 1920s. The cacophony of clashing styles and Post's penchant for glitz were slammed by architectural critics at the time and Palm Beach's snootiest residents no doubt, who regarded Mar-a-Lago as a vulgar eyesore.
Scores of staff were required to maintain the outrageously ostentatious property and as the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, Post even went to the trouble of installing three bunkers, but she spent just six weeks of the year from New Year's to George Washington's birthday at Mar-a-Lago. Still, the scion was as generous as she was extravagant and, along with hosting the elite, she held charity benefits at the estate and had a convalescence center for injured soldiers built in the grounds during the Second World War.
Towards the end of her life, the pampered heiress worried about the future of her beloved Mar-a-Lago. Fearing the property would be demolished, she came up with the idea of bequeathing it to the nation to serve as a permanent Winter White House. The federal government were initially lukewarm about the proposal but accepted the gift in 1972 after Post agreed to cover the maintenance costs. She died the following year.
Post's generous bequest turned out to be a poisoned chalice for the government. She'd left just $3 million to maintain the property but the costs soon ballooned to a million dollars a year, an annual bill the powers that be were ultimately unwilling to foot. President Nixon favored staying at his Key Biscayne home when he visited Florida, President Ford had little interest in the estate and the famously humble President Carter saw it as a frivolous extravagance.
Plus, the property's location directly under a flight path created a security nightmare. President Carter finally made the decision to get rid of Mar-a-Lago and handed the vacant presidential estate back to the Post Foundation in 1981, though it took an Act of Congress to make it happen. The property was put on the market for $20 million – though some sources say $25 million – but potential buyers were not to be found and permission was sought to raze it to the ground.
According to the City Journal, Trump is said to have first heard about Mar-a-Lago from a taxi cab driver during a drive around Palm Beach, and knew there and then that he just had to have it. To the flashy real estate mogul, Post's winter retreat represented the ultimate trophy property. Trump initially offered the Post family $15 million for the estate.
The offer was rejected, so Trump decided to play tough. He purchased a beachfront parcel of land between the estate and ocean for $2 million. According to The Independent, he revealed plans to put a building up that would block the sea view from Mar-a-Lago, thus depreciating its value and putting off rival buyers.
Trump's audacious move had the desired effect. In 1985, the Post family agreed to accept just $8 million for the estate and all its contents. This is a fraction of what Mar-a-Lago cost to build in real terms and what it's estimated to be worth nowadays – Forbes valued the property at $160 million in 2018. The property magnate had landed the real estate bargain of the year, if not the decade.
When the Trump empire ran into financial difficulties in the early 1990s, Donald Trump worked out a way of turning his money-pit estate into a money-making juggernaut – by transforming it into a member's club. To win over the Palm Beach town council and gain permission for his venture, Trump promised to carry out a sensitive restoration of Mar-a-Lago, according to the Palm Beach Post. This would also allow him to claim a massive tax break in the form of a conservation easement.
Trump billed the club as open to all who could afford to sign up, unlike the two most established private members' clubs in Palm Beach, which, shockingly, barred African American, Jewish and LGBTQ+ people from joining. While Trump has been rightly applauded for this inclusive policy, some commentators say his motives were more about making as much money as possible and further ingratiating himself with the town council than anything benevolent. The town eventually granted permission for the club, though with some strings attached, which we will come to later.
Trump shelled out millions on the expensive restoration, which was given a big thumbs up by conservationists, and splurged on a number of additions to the property, including two swimming pools, a beauty salon and a spa, with the lion's share of the money going on a new 20,000-square-foot ballroom in the Louis XIV style. Trump is said to have spent $7 million gilding the palatial space and $100,000 a-piece on the gold basins in the bathrooms.
Trump was furious with Post's daughter, the actress Dina Merrill, after she wrote to the town council objecting to the club. In his book The Art of the Comeback, Trump went on to describe her as an “arrogant and aloof daughter, who was born with her mother’s beauty but not her brains”. Merrill's childhood suite is one of Mar-a-Lago's most fanciful. Inspired by Sleeping Beauty, the fairytale 'Baby House' features a charming silver-plated four-poster bed with squirrel motifs and a fireplace decorated with garlands of plaster roses.
Interestingly, Post had iron bars installed on the windows and placed guards at the door of the Baby House following the Lindbergh kidnapping of 1932 and wouldn't allow her daughter to go anywhere without bodyguards in tow, up until her 18th birthday. In later years, guests including 'Lady Bird' Johnson stayed in the suite, and when Trump acquired the property, his daughter Ivanka got dibs on it, though these days she prefers staying in the Banyan Bungalow on the grounds.
Although the mega-mansion itself, which had gone from 118 to 126 rooms, was restored, some of its contents were sold off at auction and replaced with reproductions. Among the items that Trump offloaded were the jewel-encrusted marble dining table, antique Spanish rug, Louis XIV chests and Venetian glasses worth a thousand dollars each.
The club has welcomed a long list of celebrities over the years, including Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, who spent their honeymoon at Mar-a-Lago. Other stars who visited the club whether for pleasure or to perform at a function include Oprah Winfrey, Martha Stewart, Tiger Woods, Billy Joel, Vanessa Williams, Liza Minnelli and Sylvester Stallone.
Laurence Leamer, author of Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump's Presidential Palace, recounts a story in his definitive book on the estate. In 2000, Trump hired top French chef Bernard Goupy, who wowed Celine Dion when she threw a baby shower at the club. Trump wasn't quite so impressed and fired Goupy not long after, having launched an expletive-packed tirade against his signature dish, a Ceasar salad. The chef went on to work for Dion who renamed the dish 'Trump Salad'.
An Associated Press investigation conducted in 2017 found that Mar-a-Lago had been cited for 78 health code violations in the previous three years, with inspectors flagging up a range of issues that included chefs failing to wash their hands, dirty cutting boards, mold growing on the ice machine, as well as serving unsafe seafood and meat that had been improperly refrigerated.
Trump doubled the joining fee from $100,000 to $200,000 after he became president, prompting CNBC to report allegations that he was seeking to profit from his position. Some reports suggest the fee, which was $50,000 back when the club opened in the 1990s, is now $250,000. Members are also required to stump up yearly membership dues of $14,000 and spend a minimum of $2,000 per annum on food.
Trump visited the property 32 times during his presidency, spending a total of 142 days there. Mar-a-Lago was used for important government business and hosted meetings with world leaders, including China's Xi Jinping and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. But these trips didn't come cheap with four sojourns costing a whopping $13.6 million or an average of $3.4 million each.
The number of members is estimated at almost 500 and, contrary to what you might think, the list isn't completely dominated by MAGA Republicans. They do make up a significant proportion, though, including several who were nominated by Trump for ambassador posts. The most notable left-leaning member, Democratic Party power broker George Norcross, recently gave up his membership.
In an interview promoting his book Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago and the Rise of America's Xanadu, writer Les Standiford mentioned that some people insist the ghost of Marjorie Merriweather-Post roams Mar-a-Lago's corridors. What Post would have thought of Trump is anyone's guess and although her daughter wasn't a fan, the scion's granddaughter Marjorie Post Dye praised him for preserving the property.
Pictured here from the outside, the owner's suite contains the aforementioned Versailles Master Bedroom, an additional bedroom, the Pine Hall and the Louis XV hall, living rooms, bathrooms and offices. As well as searching for a school for Barron Trump and setting up an office at Mar-a-Lago to continue her 'Be Best' campaign, Melania Trump prepared for the family's move by overseeing the suite's expansion and revamp, opting for copious dark wood and white marble.
Working with her favorite interior designer, Tham Kannalikham, Melania updated some of the private quarters in her own modern aesthetic. According to a report by CNN, Donald Trump is said to have hit the roof when he saw the makeover. He reportedly ordered the immediate removal of the wood and marble. Here's how the master bedroom looked in the 1990s.
While some held rallies in support of the former President's return to Palm Beach, not everyone was pleased to see him according to CBS Miami. Some affluent neighbors have opposed Trump's permanent move to Mar-a-Lago. A letter was sent to the town council in December requesting that a 1993 agreement prohibiting any club member – including Trump – from staying at the property for more than three weeks a year be duly enforced.
The council's attorney is now reviewing Trump's permanent residency and the matter is likely to be discussed at the next council meeting. Having fought a succession of battles with the local authorities, Trump, who has taken legal action against the council on several occasions, isn't afraid of a scrap and can argue in court that the council had no objection to him exceeding the limit while he was president.
Since Trump stepped down as president, the mood at the club is rumored to have become decidedly 'sad' and somber. Author Laurence Leamer told MSNBC host Alex Witt that "It's a very dispirited place". With impeachment proceedings underway, it will be interesting to see how this great American estate will fair in the future.
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