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Vintage photos show Mar-a-Lago before Donald Trump owned the nearly 100-year-old estate
September 23, 20240
Post and her then-husband E.F. Hutton hired an architect named Marion Sims Wyeth to design the 114-room Mediterranean-style villa.
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The stones contain small seashells and fossils, according to Mar-a-Lago’s website.
Guests entered the main house through a wrought-iron and grille-glass door that opened into an ornate entrance hall.
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The carved doors in the entrance hall led into the living room.
In the living room, Venetian silk panels and carved arches added to the room’s splendor.
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The design of the dining room was modeled after the dining room in the Palazzo Chigi in Rome, The Palm Beach Post reported.
The dining room table, containing 11 semiprecious stones, could seat 30 people.
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Post’s Hillwood Estate also dedicated rooms to displaying her collections of art from 18th-century France and imperial Russia.
Post slept in a bedroom adorned with decorative wall panels and carved wood furniture.
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Post would use her dressing room as a space to do paperwork in the mornings.
The side of the home that faced Lake Worth was shaped like a crescent.
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Mar-a-Lago was built to resist hurricanes with concrete and steel anchors securing it to a coral reef.
In 1961, Post commissioned Wyeth again to add a pavilion with a dance floor for her square-dancing parties.
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After 10 years, the government transferred ownership of the property to the Post Foundation.
Post ultimately got her wish when Trump purchased Mar-a-Lago for around $10 million in 1985 and spent time there during his presidency.
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Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump, restored Mar-a-Lago to the way it looked when Post lived there. Trump also established the Mar-a-Lago Club in 1995, offering beach and pool amenities as well as event spaces for weddings and galas.
Mar-a-Lago has continued to make headlines as the site of a 2022 FBI raid regarding classified documents that federal prosecutors allege Trump illegally kept at his residence after leaving the White House. Trump was indicted by the Department of Justice and charged with 37 criminal charges including 31 alleged violations of the Espionage Act. A Trump-appointed judge dismissed the charges in July, and Trump plans to sue the Justice Department for $100 million.
The valuation of Mar-a-Lago was also a point of contention in Trump’s civil-fraud case. In February, a judge ruled that Trump committed fraud by falsely inflating the valuations of his properties, including Mar-a-Lago, to defraud banks and insurers and ordered him to pay a $355 million fine. Trump has appealed the ruling.