Vizcaya Museum & Gardens
Vizcaya, once the villa and estate of businessman
James Deering of the Deering, McCormick-International Harvester
fortune, sits alongside Biscayne Bay in the Coconut Grove district
of Miami, Florida and welcomes visitors to its opulent and
extravagant surroundings that include native woodland landscapes,
expansive Italian renaissance gardens, the early 20th century villa,
and a historical village with outbuildings. Originally the estate
held 180 acres of pristine mangrove swamps and thick inland native
tropical forests, that would be left, since Deering was an avid
conservationist. The villa would be constructed between 1914 and
1916, with the gardens and village continuing to be worked on until
1923. In the years around WWI, supplies and materials would be
difficult to come by, so the builders decided to incorporate the
historical European aesthetic traditions to southern Florida's
subtropical ecosystem, like combining imported French and Italian
garden layouts and elements that could be implemented into the Cuban
limestone stonework with Floridian coral architectural trim and
planted with sub-tropic compatible and native plants that would
thrive very well in this environment. Deering would use the villa as
his winter retreat from 1916 until his passing in 1925. After his
death, the estate would be inherited by his two nieces, Ely Deering
McCormick Danielson and Marion Chauncey Deering McCormick. As the
years rolled on, the estate would be beset by hurricanes and higher
maintenance costs so that the two ladies would be forced to sell off
the surrounding land and outer gardens. Then, in 1945, they would
donate large parts of the property to the Catholic archdiocese of
St. Augustine, Florida and to Miami's Mercy Hospital; with just
fifty acres, the villa, the village and formal gardens retained. In
1952, Miami-Dade county would acquire the estate for $1 million,
with Deering heirs donating the furnishings and antiquities to the
county museum. In 1953, it would become the Dade County Art museum,
until they could find a place of their own on another part of the
estate.
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