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Mizner Industries / Mizner Style  Palm Beach society architect Addison Mizner created the “Palm Beach style” with his design for the Everglades Club on Worth Avenue in 1918. He quickly found that he was not able to purchase through local suppliers the tile and iron work he needed for his Spanish design. He took over a blacksmith shop to make lighting fixtures and ornamental grills and built his own kilns to make the roof tiles. As his commissions grew, he purchased various craft shops to supply the décor and materials for his projects. Mizner Industries grew into one of the largest manufacturing companies in Palm Beach in the 1920s. The company made tiles, hand made pottery, wrought iron and stamped metal fixtures, cast stone columns, windows, and door surrounds, indoor and outdoor furniture, and art glass. The furnishings and other details were often distressed to give them the appearance of antiquity. Mizner Industries also imported antique furniture, decorative tiles, and other accessories to supplement the locally made products. Together these items helped furnish homes through South Florida built in the “Mediterranean Revival” style.
 By the 1950s, these furnishings and details were no longer in vogue; many were lost in the demolition of Palm Beach estates or the various renovations of the Boca Raton Club. Because of Boca Raton’s close ties with the architect, “Mizner Industries” has been a focus of the Boca Raton Historical Society’s collections since the 1970s. In this new exhibition at Town Hall we present a sampling of our current knowledge of both known Mizner Industries products (a rarity) and artifacts which represent the “Mizner style,” popular once again.
Boomtime Boca: Boca Raton in the 1920s  Boca Raton, Florida was a tiny farming community on the southeastern coast of Florida when the Florida real estate boom of the 1920s grew into a national phenomenon. Investors and new residents were drawn to the state from all over the country, a time Floridians will forever know as “The Boom.” In April 1925, well known Palm Beach society architect Addison Mizner revealed his plans for an ambitious new development at Boca Raton. The small town was to be “the world’s premier resort” and “the dream city of the western world.” Mizner’s projects stimulated other developments in the south county area like George Harvey’s “Villa Rica,” and Frank Croissant’s “Croissantania.” The little town blossomed as well. Incorporated in 1925, town fathers established police and fire services and commissioned a new town hall from Delray architect William Alsmeyer in 1927. The population of the town grew from one hundred to several hundred residents.
By the fall of 1926, however, the Boom was near its end. Negative press and a rail embargo preceded two of the most destructive hurricanes in Florida’s history, the 1926 and 1928 storms, both of which hit Boca Raton. New residents left South Florida in droves. The Boom was Bust.
In the fall of 1927, Mizner Development Corporation investor Clarence Geist acquired the company’s holdings. He immediately laid plans for the expansion of the Cloister Inn, hiring famed New York architects Schultze and Weaver to more than double the size of the original hostelry. The new Boca Raton Club opened in 1930. Boca Raton returned, for the most part, to its small-town agricultural heritage by the end of the decade. With the outstanding exceptions of the Boca Raton Club and other boom-era construction, there were few signs of the glamorous resort community once envisioned by the great Addison Mizner. Boomtime Boca will feature artifacts, artwork, and photographs from this glamorous and exciting era in our community’s past. Boomtime Boca: Boca Raton in the 1920s is available in the Fire Bay Gift Shop or through giftshop online. 
Parking is free.
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Fort Lauderdale native Bill Crawford is a long time attorney, former president of the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society, and member of the Broward County Historical Commission. Mr. Crawford is a noted scholar and prolific author and speaker on state and local history subjects and has been honored by the Fort Lauderdale and Broward County commissions for his contributions to the preservation of local history. Florida's Big Dig is the story of people of vision and courage, of a small group of prominent Saint Augustine investors who conceived of the Florida waterway and began the first dredging work; of an obscure group of New England capitalists who provided significant financing and obtained a million acres of undeveloped Florida public land in pursuing what was, at best, a speculative enterprise; of innumerable citizen groups like the Florida east coast chamber associations and the larger Atlantic Waterways Association that demanded at the turn of the last century what they believed was the peoples right—a public waterway, free of the burden of tolls; and finally, of the U.S. Army corps of Engineers, who conducted all of the Florida waterway's early surveys and assumed the projects control in 1929 to convert what was once a private toll way into Florida's modern-day, toll free Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.
Archaeologist Chris Davenport received his BA from Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire and his MA from the University of Tennessee, specializing in zooarchaeology. He has many years of experience in cultural resource management, working in the private sector in the mid-Atlantic states and later for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Chris has served as the Palm Beach County archaeologist and county preservation officer for four years. Big Mound City is the second largest prehistoric Native American earthwork in Florida. It is located in Palm Beach County although getting to it is next to impossible. It is but one of the many radiating earthworks found in southern Florida. This mound form with its multiple arms is only found in southern Florida. Virtually nothing else is known about these mounds or about the people who constructed them. Mr. Davenport will examine what is known about these mysterious earthworks and discuss his ongoing research regarding these fascinating ancient structures. He will include in his discussion Boca Raton area sites such as the Barnhill Mound, the home of the Ancient America tourist attraction.
A to Z is a traveling exhibition of twenty-eight 20”x 30” hanging panels designed as an accompaniment to the BRHS children’s publication, A Stroll Through Boca Raton’s History from A to Z, by Deborah Rothberger. Each panel graphically (and alphabetically) depicts some person, place, event, or concept in Boca Raton’s over 100 years history. Learning history can be fun! (Perfect for libraries, schools, etc.) A to Z is available for an up to three month rental for a $100.00 fee; rental fee scholarships are available on a limited basis from time to time. 
