Whitehall is a 75-room Gilded Age palace built in 1902 by Henry Flagler, the Standard Oil partner who effectively invented modern Florida by extending his railroad to Miami and Key West. He built the mansion as a honeymoon retreat; it is one of the most lavish examples of Beaux-Arts excess in the American South.
The museum occupies the original mansion, which has been carefully restored to its 1902 splendour: marble entrance hall, a Louis XIV ballroom, a Flemish drawing room, a Spanish Renaissance dining room, a Swiss billiards room. Each room is a different style, assembled by the same confident eclecticism that characterized the Gilded Age. The collection includes Flagler's personal effects, original furnishings, and exhibits on the development of the Florida railroad. The Rambler — Flagler's private railway car — sits in a building behind the house. The setting, in a formal garden on the Lake Worth waterfront, makes the approach as impressive as the interior.