A Walk Through the Past

Architect Addison Mizner’s legacy comes to life through a centennial exhibit

By Nila Do Simon

It could be said that the new museum at The Boca Raton has been 100 years in the making. And, for the most part, it would be true. Opened in December 2025, Cloister Inn Museum: A Mizner Legacy was created as a devotion to preserving The Boca Raton’s history and its impact to the City of Boca Raton over the past century. Artifacts and relics of the resort and Club’s heritage are displayed throughout the bi-level museum, documenting the destination’s origin as a groundbreaking 100 room inn that has evolved into today’s world-class destination.

Blended into Cloister’s fabric and adjacent to Sadelle’s main dining entrance, Cloister Inn Museum’s entrance placement is an intentional nod to the property’s origin story. Here—underneath the accents of the original pecky cypress ceiling and beams, and cast stone door surround—is where hotel guests and Club members are invited to take in history. The museum’s entrance is in the exact location of the hotel’s original lobby, giving today’s visitors a chance to breathe in the same entrance that the hotel’s first visitors ever walked through.

Greeting visitors is the property’s original visionary, Addison Mizner. An 82-inch-by-61-inch portrait of him, to be clear. Created by Palm Beach based artist Serge Strosberg, the large-scale portrait is a modern adaptation of an original black-and-white photograph of Mizner himself, taken at the Feb. 6, 1926 opening of the Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn (as The Boca Raton was originally named). Painted in vivid oil and egg tempera colors, the portrait brings the space to life. Leaning against a wooden chair in a black tuxedo, cigarette in hand, Mizner’s countenance is steady as he welcomes guests, both in 1926 and now a century later.

On the wall next to the portrait are three enlarged advertisements from the 1920s that promote the idea of living in a new frontier of Boca Raton, touting that “Nights are long and hearts are light in the gladstone setting of the Ritz-Carlton Cloister at Boca Raton.”

The ground-floor space also includes the treasured relic of the original guestbook from the opening party for the property, a fête that historian Donald Curl said rivaled “the social registers of two continents.” Behind the guestbook and encased behind glass is a miniature Cloister Inn model by Robert and Margaret Eskridge, a husband-and-wife team trained as architects and artists.

The museum was brought to fruition by Hector Rubio, The Boca Raton’s Executive Director of Creative & Programming, who immersed himself into the history of the property and city. He worked extensively with historians and curators, including those at the Boca Raton Historical Society. “The more I learned about the history, the more I wanted to share with visitors to show the true scale of what Addison Mizner set out to do,” Rubio says.

A Walk Through the Past

Architect Addison Mizner’s legacy comes to life through a centennial exhibit

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