We visited Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami. Our wonderful guest and tour guide, Marvin, is a Miami native with a passion for real estate and a wealth of knowledge. We were in awe to be in the same place where the gardens there once fed at least 40% of Dade county during the great depression. This place is pretty significant in Florida’s history and we are lucky to have had an exclusive look.
Marvin:
Well, hi again, welcome and thank you very much for coming to Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. This is a national historic landmark. We are one of the original estates here in south Florida. We were constructed in 1914, completed in 1916 with the structure. The gardens took a few more years and were completed in 1922. What I’ll be showing you today is from the original time of construction. Very important aside from the estate and the decorated gardens was the village as well. That supported the staff that not only built the property here, but also fed a lot of the community that was around as well. We will take a quick walk over there, we’ll be brief. I’ll explain some of the buildings and then I’ll come back and show you more on this side!
Lynette Zang:
Excellent. I’m very excited.
Marvin:
How’s the bug out house coming?
Lynette Zang:
Well, I’ll show you some pictures from the bug out house. At the moment as we’re speaking, they are building the hot houses for growing. So that’s happening right now. I need to buy a few tents, but I’ve got sleeping for 40.
Marvin:
Oh wow. That’s awesome.
New Speaker:
Yeah, I’m doing everything for 40 people. So building our own little village up there.
Marvin:
So the original property extended for, you know, 180 acres originally, it was quite massive. So here is one view of it. And this is another view. This is from south looking north, and this is the same garage building on this side. So, to kinda get oriented of the initial size of this property. It was quite massive.
Lynette Zang:
Yes, it was.
Marvin:
It now since at where the shaded area is including the shaded area here at about 50 acres, but originally it was 180 acres.
Lynette Zang:
Oh, wow. Yep. Well, there was a big land boom in Florida during that period of time, as they were opening up the credit spigots, correct. To start to transition us!
Marvin:
His brother actually also brought, he bought about 200 acres of land. Give or take actually, right? Not far from the conferences in an area called Buena Vista. And so initially he purchased the 200 acres there and following that land boom and the, you know, amount of people that were coming and it was urbanizing in the area around him, he liked to be able to preserve his environment and seeing how much encroachment there was from urbanization. He actually moved his property a little bit further south. So he sold that property and bought another about 230 acres or so down south nice of the Deering estate. So fortunately James Deering, who’s the owner of this property did not have to do that. I will explain more about him as we go along. Okay. So this is the entrance to the farm forecourt. Here was the garage, we can enter. This was the building where his garage, his vehicles would be stored here. He had several vehicles, eight or nine couple motorcycles. He enjoyed his little collection of vehicles as well, but the chauffeur would come and deliver the vehicle here. There was a turntable to remove the vehicle when he was done.
Lynette Zang:
Wow. That’s amazing technology for that period of time!
Marvin:
Oh my goodness, he was certainly the top 10th of 1% of American wealth at the time. So he lacked no resources to be able to get anything he needed. <Laugh> at the time of construction, there was about 10,000 people in the county of Miami-Dade. And he had about a thousand of them working to build his this property. So he had about 10% of the local economy employed here.
Marvin:
So this was the superintendent’s residents. So here, obviously we are growing a small garden. This is not the size that it would’ve been originally. This is something that we do now in order to be able to work with the community and educate the community, especially school groups on how to grow and how sustainable farming would’ve worked at that time, how our climate can grow the diversity that our, our climate can grow and let ’em get their hands dirty with trying it out themselves.
Lynette Zang:
How did they construct these buildings?
Marvin:
So a lot of it is vernacular architecture using the sources that are available locally. A lot of the it’s almost all of it is cement. The stone that you see the stonework it’s alytic limestone, some of it was mined or was quarried in key west. Some of it was quarried in Cuba as well, shift them all the way.
Lynette Zang:
So a lot of recycling, but also a lot of using cause Cuba’s close to Miami obviously, right? Correct. So using the local materials that they could easily source.
Marvin:
They could easily source and they could trust that was gonna be able to take the climate that we had here, the weather that we have here.
Lynette Zang:
That’s very much what we’re working on doing up at my bug out location. We discovered that we have these huge clay beds. And so we are doing really as much construction as possible from the materials right on site. Okay. Cause again, it’s hard to get it up there. Absolutely. It’s a very remote location.
Marvin:
James Deering was originally from Chicago, so he had a fear of fire. And so he wanted the paint shop with the fumes and the chemicals as far away from him as he can get it. And so it is quite literally on the other side of the property, the rest of the original buildings here were in the original plans and they quickly discovered that they needed more space. So they then designed the staff residence.
Lynette Zang:
Okay. These were, and now the materials that they use to, to produce all of this, especially since they were local, these would be fire resistant at the minimum, if not fireproof.
Marvin:
Right? Absolutely. Most of it was. And that’s actually one of the reasons why they went with the walls of the main house of the exterior or 22 inches thick. They were a type of Mason work at that time that didn’t require, you know, basically the reinforcement at any time. It was just the pure cement.
Lynette Zang:
It’s part of the reason why I’m doing all the sustainable building like that because the rammed earth I think we’re gonna do a hemp house. We probably do a cob house, but any of those are fire resistant.
Marvin:
So I will explain the hammock. This is an environment called south Florida Rockland hammock. And there are not very many examples of this left in south Florida. However, this, because of the elevation, because of the ridges that I had mentioned before and the type of bedding that we have here, this does very well here. And so every tree that you see will be native to the environment, there are, I’m sure some that are invasive, but largely what is here is native in 1912 in December of 1912, he began purchasing the land that’s here. So he bought about 130 acres at the time.
Lynette Zang:
Do you know what the price was?
Marvin:
A thousand dollars per acre, of oceanfront property in Miami.
Lynette Zang:
That’s a deal.
Marvin:
So coming up to the north side of the house, this is where you’re gonna see the pool. You’re gonna see the orchidarium and you’re gonna see the cafe. Historically right behind these windows is where he would’ve had the billiards room, the poker room. So he was only here at the property for a few years before he passed away. He was, he came here on Christmas of 1916 actually was when he first moved in and he wound up passing away in 1925. Oh wow. So he was only here for a few year. James Deering, the financier of this, the owner of this, as well as his interior designer, they would travel all over Europe and Asia. You know, they went all over the world, looking for influences and looking for artifacts to be able to purchase, to furnish his property. Mm-Hmm
Lynette Zang:
<Affirmative> I like to do that too. <Laugh> it’s fun.
Marvin:
The incredible thing is that this property was constructed in just two years. And so from 1914, they started in 1960.
Lynette Zang:
That is amazing.
Marvin:
This would’ve been called the entrance hall. And so as visitors arrived by vehicle, there was obviously no AC in vehicles at that point either. And so they, chances were, they came and they were needed some refreshment. And so when they would enter, there was a female’s powder room and a male’s cloak room was over here. They’d be able to refresh themselves while waiting for Mr. Deering. The goal for Deering was that he wanted it to look like he had multiple generations of his family living here. And the goal for Chalfin was he didn’t want to capture just one segment of history. Just one example of history basing off of just one property. He wanted to capture a streak of history, a whole timeline of history into his construction. So each of the rooms are essentially from a different era. They’re styled after a different era. The telephone room, this would’ve been the very first telephone in Miami.
Marvin:
And again, he had in the garage building those across the street, in that garage building, there would’ve been the switch, the switchboard actually would’ve been a full time staff operating switchboard, and you could make a private call out of here and without the operator hearing what you were discussing. So the amount of technology in this house is really incredible. Incredible. It is. So there is at the time there was no residential available refrigeration system, but there were commercial refrigeration systems. And of course we’re talking about somebody with all the resources in the world. So he had the very first residential refrigeration system. There was a brine cooler, we’ll show you one last thing, cause it’s a nod to security. And I know we’re big on that.
Lynette Zang:
Yes, indeed. We are very big on security.
Marvin:
One of the things that I found really, really cool about the house. So he had at the time remember extremely technological advanced. He had a phone system through the house. So he had wiring for the phone lines. He had wiring through the electricity. Of course he had wiring he had everything for the central vacuum, but he also had a burglar system, a burglar alarm system, some of the doorways you’ll still see, they, they will have, there was a button that they would be to press whenever they close the door to show that the, the door was closed. And so if they would open, there was a corresponding burglar bell that would ring in some of the staff areas to let them know. Well, thank you all very, very much.
Lynette Zang:
Oh, good. Thank you very much. Was fascinating. Very good. And even though we were here last year, this was, we got so much more out of it this year. Yeah. What I also find like really so fascinating is the age of this, but then the similarity to a lot of things that are happening today, right. Because everything does go full circle. Right. So when you look back on this period of time, you know, they were coming off of a golden age, they were shifting into a completely new system. And one of the things that always happens during that shift is that they allow the masses to have access to liquidity or gains for a minute so that they don’t notice the transition, right? Until they’re well entrenched in the new system.
Marvin:
That does sound very familiar.
Lynette Zang:
Doesn’t that sound very familiar. Yes. And you know, and then nobody wants to hear about it because they feel like they’re making money. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> even though what’s really happening is that they are getting sucked into a new system. So what they look at as value is actually declining, but they can’t see
Marvin:
It’s the cognitive dissonance.
Lynette Zang:
Exactly, exactly. But everything old is new again.
Marvin:
Well, and the wonderful thing is that, and it’s on display here definitely is these, a lot of the artifacts are in the house are not from the time period that it was built. They were artifacts from beforehand. And so there’s history preserves. Absolutely. And these collective items, which he traveled and filled the Southwest, certainly wealth preservation was highly experienced in that.
Lynette Zang:
While there are three legs, you know, there are three legs of dynastic wealth. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> rare collectibles. I mean, truly rare collectibles is one of those legs, as is real estate and then the other one is gold because that’s exactly, and that, that is it’s like real money.
Marvin:
and he took it a step further and built community and built the farming and built everything around it.
Lynette Zang:
Hence the Mantra
Marvin:
Absolutely. And if not for this estate and not, if not for James Deering, his family largely, but definitely, certainly him. We wouldn’t have quite the development in Miami that we have today. This architecture here, the development and the farm went on to influence certainly George Merrick, when he developed coral Gables, which is one of our finest communities down here. And many other areas that around here, they were pivotal to the development of Miami as a global stage city at this point.
Lynette Zang:
Yeah, absolutely. And as we were talking before, when we were in the garden part, you know, that fed during the depression it fed at least 40% of the community, right. In Dade county. So it’s pretty significant. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything that you’ve done here. Wonderful. And that you continue to do and to maintain this history because you know, history has a tendency to repeat itself and it’s important that we maintain this and learn.
Marvin:
Well, and it’s, I’m Miami native. So it’s important to me, this is the history of my city. So I appreciate it from a personal standpoint, from a upbringing standpoint and then for excited about the future standpoint as well.
Lynette Zang:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I know everything looks like doom and gloom and all of that, but there is also opportunity and change. You just have to learn from the past and then hopefully the community can come together. So we don’t allow those same mistakes to be made, even if they look a little different. Right. You know, that we end up with a more fair system. Absolutely. So it’s important.
Marvin:
Oh, wonderful. I hope to see you all tonight. I will be. Yeah, I’ll be there.
