Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Gilded Age

I had heard that the Flagler Museum, a winter retreat built in 1902 by Henry Flagler as a wedding gift for his wife, would be a fun place to have lunch with my Mom. It is a mansion situated on the intracoastal in Palm Beach and is a year-round museum with a waterfront cafe. We had lunch in the glass pavilion that also houses Henry's private rail car (see it pictured below) - which is significant in that Flagler spent his life building luxury hotels along the Florida coast and then developed a railroad system (Florida East Coast Railway) to deliver the tourists to them.

Genius. All and all, it was an interesting peek into what Mark Twain dubbed "The Gilded Age."

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