Marjorie Merriweather Post said she wanted, “a little cottage by the sea.”
If you are not sure you know who Marjorie Merriweather Post is, take a close look at her last name and think of cereal. Yes, that Post. Marjorie did not marry into the fortune. She was born a Post, despite being married four times.
In the 1920s Post and her second husband decided to build a home in Palm Beach, an area long the winter home of the rich and powerful. Marjorie personally chose the site, 17 acres between Lake Worth and the Atlantic, and gave it an appropriate name indicating it lay “between the sea and the lake.” In Spanish that name is Mar-a-Lago. Building began in 1923 and was completed in 1927.
Excess marked every aspect of the home. There were 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms with gold-plated fixtures. The living room is 1,800 square feet, which is bigger than my entire house. The house was conspicuous in its consumption of gold leaf, Spanish tiles, Italian marble and Venetian silks. It’s $7 million price tag is the equivalent of $90 million today.
It must also be mentioned that Ms. Post treated her 600 builders well and opened her home to myriad charitable events, including a Ringling Brothers Circus held for the poor children in the area.
Marjorie Post was not the only member of the moneyed class to build mansions in Florida in the 1920s. But by the 1950s such high-maintenance homes were seen as too expensive to keep in good repair. Most were first sold, then abandoned and finally razed. Even Ms. Post (1887-1973) decided that her three beautiful homes would be given to charitable trusts, rather than trying to maintain them within the family.
Her Mar-a-Lago was offered to the state of Florida as a home for advanced scholars. Not surprisingly, Florida decided it didn’t need any advanced scholars, at least not at the price of Mar-a-Lago.
In 1968, Post offered the home as a winter White House, but the U.S. government turned it down. It was just too expensive to maintain a mammoth home that was built with pre-Depression plumbing, wiring and inefficient nooks and crannies.
Subsequently, the home went on the market and Donald Trump bought it in 1985 for $8 million. The home, which matched his ego but not his bank account, was then to be made self-supporting by being turned into a golf club, renting out rooms to wealthy guests.
Essentially, this is Trump’s version of Ma Bailey’s boarding house. But it allows him to put on the façade so important to his shtick. Trump’s need to make money off this property even extended to charging the Secret Service full price for the rooms they needed to occupy when they were protecting him during his failed presidency.
Mar-a-Lago is now in the news, in part because of a hollowed-out room that Trump had built under the spacious living room. The hotel staff referred to the area as the Mold Room and it was used to store tables, chairs and generally unneeded items. Then Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago and the Mold Room also became the storage area for improperly retained and highly classified items that belong to the U.S. government.
Many people are wondering why Trump left the White House with hundreds of documents of strategic value. I am pretty sure his reason for keeping the top-secret material is the same reason he bought the house and then started renting out rooms. Trump needs the money. He has always needed the money. A grifter needs a good front so they spend beyond their means. A grifter talks fast, tells the marks what they want to hear, grabs the money and runs.
Trump is most certainly no Post. He isn’t even Fruity Pebbles, though he might be Grape-Nuts.
Think about that while you enjoy a bowl of cereal. Oh, and keep the faith.
Louise Butler is a retired educator and published author who lives in Edinburg. She writes for The Monitor’s Board of Contributors.
