Mar-a-Lago, also known as the Winter White House, was the creation of Michigan breakfast cereal royalty, Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Big Cereal began in Battle Creek nearly 130 years ago. C.W. Post was an unhealthy man and sought out Dr. John Kellogg at the Battle Creek Sanitarium for treatment in 1891. While getting treatment at the sanitarium, Post got the idea for Postum cereal beverage, the first Postum Cereal Company product. Postum was marketed as a healthy alternative to coffee, because coffee was considered unhealthy at the time due to its caffeine.
Post had a talent for marketing and business and beat Dr. Kellogg’s brother W.K. to the punch by getting his cereal products to market first. Grape-Nuts, one of the products that Post created in 1897, is still made today.
Upon Post’s death in 1914, his daughter Marjorie became the wealthiest woman in America. Marjorie had learned the food business at a young age, gluing Postum labels onto packages as a child in Battle Creek.
By 1920, Marjorie’s first marriage had ended, and she married E.F. “Ned” Hutton, co-founder of one of America’s biggest financial firms at the time. Marjorie’s marriage to Ned helped expand the Postum Cereal company by acquiring brands we are familiar with today, such as Jell-O, Maxwell House Coffee, and more. They named the expanded company General Foods.
In the 1920s, Palm Beach was where America’s wealthy went for the winter. During an interview from 1962, Marjorie said that she and her husband were looking for a large property between Lake Worth and the Atlantic Ocean. They were looking for an undeveloped property with a coral reef base so that steel reinforcements could be drilled into it to withstand hurricanes. The 17-acre property they found inspired the name “Mar-a-Lago,” meaning “sea to lake” in Spanish.
Marjorie and Ned wasted no time hiring the most talented and creative people to build their home, including Marion Syms Wyeth, Joseph Urban, and Franz Barwig. The team mixed Venetian, Spanish, and Italian styles throughout the home.
Home construction began in January 1925, and it took 587 men to build the home. By November 1927, the estate, spanning 126 rooms and 62,500 square feet, was done.
Gold-plated fixtures are found throughout because Marjorie thought they would be easier to clean. She also acquired more than 36,000 Spanish and Portuguese tiles, all made between 1398 and 1515. Some of the tiles were recovered from old shipwrecks that never completed their journey.
In the early 1950s, three bomb shelters were added to the basement, and a dance pavilion was built in the early 1960s for square dancing parties.
How did President Trump come to own the property?
At the time of the sale of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump was looking for a property in Palm Beach. He got lucky when several real estate deals fell through before he put in his bid.
Marjorie originally was going to donate the house to the state of Florida, according to the original Mar-a-Lago proposal. The state turned down the proposal due to the exorbitant upkeep costs.
Marjorie came up with an alternate plan to turn Mar-a-Lago into the Winter White House, giving the property to the U.S. government. After her death, the home bounced between the U.S. government and the Post Foundation for the same reason the state of Florida rejected the property.
In 1985, the home went up for sale, and Donald Trump purchased the estate for $7 million.
It took some savvy real estate tactics for Donald Trump to get the Mar-a-Lago estate for such a fantastic price. The Post Foundation turned down his original offer of $15 million. But Trump does not give up easily. His next step was to purchase the beachfront property next door for $2 million dollars. Trump stated his intention to build a house on the beach. Other potential buyers of Mar-a-Lago backed out.
Thirty years after purchasing Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump made Marjorie Merriweather Post’s dream come true, turning her crown jewel property into the Winter White House.
Jennifer Ayres is a native Michigander, wife, and mother to two beautiful children, with a passion for writing.
