VERO BEACH — Addison Mizner's architectural visions were unquestionably boundless.

But it is doubtful he could have imagined that the demolished ruins from some of his best-known Palm Beach mansions would one day be transformed into Vero Beach landmarks.

While Mizner's masterpieces vanished from the Palm Beach landscape, Waldo Sexton, Indian River County's most prolific pioneer and entrepreneur, began amassing prized Mizner artifacts from these houses and incorporating them into the design and décor of his several Vero Beach enterprises.

The Mizner collection in Vero Beach affords a rare opportunity for public access to private Palm Beach.

"The wrecking company called my father whenever they bulldozed a Palm Beach mansion because they knew he bought by the truckload and they could dump it in our back yard," said Ralph Sexton, Waldo's son.

Antiquities and reproductions

As Mizner Industries mixed antiquities with reproductions in manufacturing the signature Palm Beach style, the Sexton family's vast Mizner collection in Vero Beach contains facsimiles hammered and assembled at Mizner's Bunker Road factory in West Palm Beach during the 1920s, as well as magnificent museum-quality objets d'art suitable for a major museum.

"My mother thought it was junk, and my father called them antiques. They fought over what my father spent on the rubbish nobody else wanted," Sexton said.

Once Mizner buffs forgive the artifacts' current casual eclectic settings compared with their intended extravagant origins, they can appreciate a remarkable stash of Spanish Renaissance tile plaques, wrought-iron torchieres, medina lanterns and palace chandeliers, window grilles from El Mirasol, bas-relief panels from Playa Riente, glorious doors and a myriad of architectural details from some of the 20 Mizner houses demolished in Palm Beach during the past 60 years.

Several enterprises

a backdrop for relics

After Waldo Sexton prospered in citrus, cattle and real estate during the 1920s, he began various businesses during the Depression — McKee Jungle Garden in 1931, in partnership with Arthur McKee; the oceanfront Driftwood Inn in 1934; the downtown Patio restaurant in 1935, first known as Aunt Lulu's Fruit Stand; and later, the Ocean Grill in 1945, and the Turf Club, today's Szechuan Palace. These venues, together with his own homestead, furnished the backdrop for the hordes of Mizner relics whose provenance began with Waldo's acquisitions from the sheriff's 1930s bankruptcy sale of Villa Mizner, Mizner's Worth Avenue shop and apartment.

"Perhaps my father collected and assembled more than designed and built. He would open a place without blueprints or permits. And then, he found the objects that gave them character and history," Sexton said.

Each of Waldo's concerns developed its own unique historicism. The Patio restaurant became Sexton's "flea market," according to his son, where he stored items that he did not keep for himself.

Sexton's personal collection was installed at his homestead on 12th Avenue, where his grandson, Mark Tripson; his wife, Hildie; and their family have lived for the past 30 years.

"It is as if Waldo just ran down to the store," said Hildie Tripson. "We have kept most things the way they were when Waldo passed away in 1967."

Set off from the road and shaded by tall trees on the last 10 acres of the Tripson family's dairy, Waldo Sexton's house reflects many aspects of South Florida's past century.

"Waldo always said the porte-cochère columns were from the ashes of The Breakers II fire in the 1920s," said Mark Tripson, as he pointed to the restored column supports for the family's homestead.

The house's open patios are bordered by a labyrinth of garden areas. The upper-story porches are graced with large tables composed of century's old Spanish tiles, signature Mizner pieces. An open backyard kitchen is made of stone and tile, similar to Waldo's creations at McKee Jungle Garden and the Driftwood Inn.

The interior's lofty ceilings offer the right perspective for the living room's centerpiece, a pair of immense studded doors pictured in the dining room at Playa Riente. A sofa can be found in the Tripson's family room.

"My grandfather's passion was woodwork," Mark Tripson said.

"Joe Diaz, one of Mizner's master carvers, was a good friend of my father's," Ralph Sexton added.

But, if Palm Beach claimed Addison Mizner as its patron saint of architectural design, how did a vast amount of his work end up in Vero Beach?

Architectural details transplanted

El Mirasol was the first of Mizner's houses to have some of its choice remains transplanted to Vero. When the stack of IRS liens grew greater than invitations following her husband's death in 1938, Eva Stotesbury relinquished her crown as the island's social monarch and became the era's most desperate widow. She hocked the pearls and portraits, dismissed the staff and sold off her properties.

In 1946, Mrs. Stotebury's death prompted an auction of more than 1,000 items from El Mirasol, netting $91,000 from an inventory that included 16th-century Spanish furniture and more than 4,000 potted plants, according to Historical Society of Palm Beach County records.

Within the year, the new owner, Bessemer Properties, demolished the house and announced El Mirasol would become a subdivision, possibly the utmost recognition of architectural immortality in Palm Beach.

During the following decades more Mizner houses were torn down; their irreplaceable architectural details reduced to rubble.

Big houses called 'a drag'

In 1957, Playa Riente, considered by some the grandest Palm Beach house, fell. Anna Dodge never thought the 100-room palace that cost her $2 million in the 1920s could not be sold 30 years later for $500,000. Eventually, the 27-acre ocean-to-lake property sold in 1962 as a 52-house residential subdivision.

"Big houses are a drag on the market, nobody wants to live in Playa Riente," wrote Helen Van Hoy Smith, a Palm Beach Post writer.

In 1961, Casa Bendita's new owner described the house as an example of Palm Beach's "more flamboyant history." The new owner, Cleveland industrialist Joseph Cole, said, "The great old palaces of another day are no longer attractive to modern buyers. The demand now is for less pretentious but strictly modern dwellings."

As The Towers was bulldozed in 1964, following Robert Young's death, a Miami Herald writer characterized the house as "a Moorish whim."

During the same era other Mizners, such as La Fontana and Casa Florencia, were razed.

Even the establishment of a Palm Beach Landmarks Commission could not prevent Mizner's work from being flattened.

In 1983, Alice De Lamar, Mizner's staunchest supporter, de-designated her South Ocean Boulevard house, thus allowing its demolition. Landmarks Commissioners opined "distaste for the small random interiors," and portrayed the house as "too small and personal."

Although not demolished, Sin Cuidado was de-designated, and after an extreme makeover, became known as Sans Souci.

And more recently, in 2001, L'Encantada, a Mizner import from Manalapan, was demolished, although it was described as one of Mizner's finest, most imaginative designs by Donald Curl, a Mizner scholar.

Treasures lost, saved

Along with the Mizner-designed structures destroyed within the past 50 years, more than 150 houses have been demolished in Palm Beach during the past several years. Some of these were the same houses that replaced the island's original fabric of treasured Spanish-style cottages.

Addison Mizner might not recognize Palm Beach today, were it not for the Everglades Club, Via Mizner, The Breakers and a few of his era's remaining houses.

But Mizner would no doubt immediately acknowledge the life's work of his kindred spirit and friend, Waldo Sexton, the man who saved what might have been lost forever and who shared his respect for the past and prescience of history's enduring commercial value.

WHERE TO FIND 'MIZNERABILIA'

Vero Beach's collection of Miznerabilia should be on every connoisseur's map.

Palm Beach to Vero Beach is an approximately 90-minute drive on Interstate 95. Take Exit 147 and proceed east on State Route 60 (20th Avenue). You will pass the Szechuan Palace driving east into Vero. The Patio is located downtown. McKee's Botanical Garden is south of downtown on U.S. Highway 1. The Ocean Grill and the Driftwood Resort are located across the Indian River causeway, along the oceanfront within the same block.

Szechuan Palace Restaurant, 1965 43rd Ave. (561) 562-7726.

For a light touch of Mandarin Mizner, large portions of Mizner tile embedded at the front mahogany door, hanging Moorish lanterns, wrought-iron grilles serve as table dividers. The mural is by noted Fort Pierce artist, James Hutchinson, A.E. "Bean" Backus's brother-in-law.

Patio Restaurant, 1103 21st St. (772) 567-7215; www.veropatio.com.

A Sunday brunch provides ample time to savor this eclectic Florida landmark. Walk around the outside of the building to view wall-to-wall Mizner wrought-iron grilles, doors and tile plaques. The outdoor patio features Moorish screens, grilles, lanterns and tiles. The main dining room features the Spanish Bar from Playa Riente. The wall separating the main dining room from the bar is composed from the Stotesbury's garage doors. Each of the dining rooms and bar area contains original Mizners. Mizner tiles are set in the floor. Several superb 16th-century Spanish doors are placed along the walls.

The Driftwood Resort, and Waldo's Restaurant, 3150 Ocean Drive. (772) 231-0550; www.thedriftwood.com.

Placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, the Sexton family sold the resort, with all the Mizners, in 1979. The four Playa Riente panels with the massive trefoil Gothic cast-stone arch are at the entrance to the oldest Driftwood buildings. A colorful Spanish armorial tile plaque is next to the vending machines. Walk into the lobby to glimpse the Mizner chairs, a Mizner tile table and a canopied bishop's chair. Walk along each of the building's hallways aligned with a plentiful assortment of Mizner tiles and religious cast-concrete sculptural reliefs preserved behind fiberglass shields. Waldo's Restaurant entrance has Mizner lanterns and a large tile table near the pool. Don't miss the tiled outdoor barbecue in front of the 1937 building.

Ocean Grill Restaurant, 1050 Sexton Plaza. (772) 231-5409; www.ocean-grill.com.

If your invitation to the Everglades Club is lost, bring 10 of your best friends and reserve the 8-foot center round oak table under "The Bird Cage," the largest known wrought-iron forged during the 1940s by a Vero craftsman. Do not miss walking around all of the dining rooms, each filled with artifacts from Mizner's Palm Beach houses. The mural and several paintings are by noted artist A.E. "Bean" Backus. The vargueno chest is at the entrance to the gift shop.

McKee Botanical Garden, 350 U.S. Highway 1. (772) 794-0601; www.mckeegarden.org.

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the 80-acre jungle hammock was designed by noted landscape architect, W. Lyman Phillips. It closed in 1976. After a substantial restoration, it reopened in 2001 as an 18-acre botanical garden. The Spanish Kitchen and The Hall of Giants are noted features as are the large iron gates from the demolished Whitehall Hotel in Palm Beach.

Photos by Augustus Mayhew III