These days Mar-a-Lago, the ultra-exclusive private club in Palm Beach, Fla., is usually associated with its current and most famous owner: President Trump. Mr. Trump has used the estate, with its soaring columns, gold leaf detailing and large swaths of marble, as the "winter White House" during his administration.
But the property has a long history of hosting world leaders. It was completed in 1927 as a private home for Marjorie Merriweather Post, the late heiress, businesswoman and socialite who was known in her day as the consummate hostess, entertaining guests such as Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson.
The influence of Ms. Post, who died in 1973, goes well beyond the Florida mansion. During her lifetime she owned spectacular homes across the Northeast, a portfolio that would be worth close to $1 billion today, according to estimates from local real-estate agents. Mostly still intact, these homes provide a rare glimpse of how the upper echelons of American society lived in a bygone era. Indeed, that is how Ms. Post intended it.
"I want young Americans to see how someone lived in the 20th century," she wrote of her wish that her Washington, D.C., estate, Hillwood, be turned into a museum after her death.
Born in 1887, Ms. Post was one of the richest women of her era. Her father, C.W. Post, started the Postum Cereal Company, which acquired brands such as Hellman’s Mayonnaise, Jell-O and Maxwell House Coffee and eventually became General Foods. Ms. Post inherited the company and served as a director. She was married four times, going back to her maiden name after her final marriage, to businessman Herbert A. May.
More:Former Beverly Hills Home of Jackie Collins Hits Market for Under $17 Million
Ms. Post grew up in Michigan, but as an adult she spent summers in the Adirondacks and winters in Palm Beach, and most of the rest of the year in Washington, D.C. In early years, she traveled between her homes in a mahogany-lined private railcar dubbed "the Hussar," with a team of staff accompanying her. Later, she flew on a private turboprop jet, or drove in a customized 1964 Cadillac Series 75 limousine. According to a book by Estella Chung, "to accommodate her hats, the limousine roof was raised 5 inches over her passenger seat."
Here’s a look at some of her most impressive former properties and their estimated values today.
Greenwich, Connecticut
When Ms. Post was 18, she married law graduate Edward Bennett Close. Ms. Post’s father gifted the couple with an 11-bedroom fieldstone mansion in Greenwich, Conn. Known as The Boulders, the estate was Ms. Post’s first experience of running a major household. At first the heiress was overwhelmed, though her father hired a housekeeper to help her as well as a team of cooks, maids, butlers and coachmen, and 50 gardeners to plant the gardens and create a nine-hole golf course, according to "American Empress," a book by Nancy Rubin.
The experience paved the way for Ms. Post’s perfectionist style of management at her properties in later years.
The Boulders was damaged by fire in 1917, and the structure is now home to Greenwich’s Eagle Hill School. Local real-estate agent Jen Danzi said the property is hard to value, since it is currently configured for commercial use, but similarly sized Greenwich estates from the same era are listed for $10 million to $20 million.
Ms. Post also owned another home in Greenwich, according to the Greenwich Historical Society. Known as the August S. Houghton House, the six-bedroom, wood-shingled home dates back to 1908 and is currently on the market for $2.9 million.
The sellers are investment manager Michael Zimmerman and his ex-wife Chris Zimmerman, who purchased the house in the late 1980s. Ms. Zimmerman said they fell in love with the original moldings and five fireplaces at the Colonial Revival-style home.
More:84-Acre Ranch Heads to Auction in California
New York City
In 1916, Ms. Post and Mr. Close bought a red brick and stone townhouse at 2 East 92nd Street in New York City. They combined it with a home they owned next door to create a massive Fifth Avenue mansion.
In 1924, after she divorced Mr. Close and married financier Edward Francis Hutton, the couple was approached by a real-estate developer who wanted to buy the house and replace it with an apartment building. They accepted his offer on the condition that he build them a penthouse at the top of his new building, according to Ms. Rubin’s book. Ms. Post also insisted that while the main entrance for residents would be on Fifth Avenue, she would keep her own personal porte-cochere on 92nd Street.
The triplex penthouse was one of the first of its kind, an "entertainment pavilion" for the elite, Ms. Rubin wrote. It had 54 rooms, including a marble-decked hall that could be used as a ballroom, cloakrooms for men and women, a drawing room overlooking Central Park, and a dining room that could seat 125 people.
Ms. Post’s penthouse was later divided up. Initially rentals, the building went co-op in the 1950s and remains one of the city’s most exclusive buildings, real-estate agents said.
More:It’s Showtime: A Beverly Hills Spec Mansion With Two Movie Theaters Asks $48 Million
A piece of Ms. Post’s former home was recently sold for $21 million by Howard Stringer, the former chief executive of Sony, according to his agent, Kathy Sloane of Brown Harris Stevens.
Mr. Stringer told The Wall Street Journal last year that he had been wowed by the apartment’s views. "The park rolls out beneath you like an extraordinary carpet," he said.
Another portion was purchased in 2014 for $30.9 million by hedge-fund manager Mark Kingdon and his wife, Anla Cheng Kingdon.
If Ms. Post’s apartment was still intact today, it could be worth more than $100 million, real-estate agents estimated.
Palm Beach, Fla.
In 1921 Ms. Post and Mr. Hutton built a house in Palm Beach to use as a winter home. Known as Hogarcito, the Mediterranean-style property was designed by architect Marion Sims Wyeth with fountains and a Spanish-style bell tower.
The roughly 10,000-square-foot house was last sold in 2016 for $12.9 million to an unnamed buyer. Carole Hogan of Brown Harris Stevens, who represented the seller, said the house could now be worth as much as $18 million.
A few years after completing Hogarcito, Ms. Post hired Mr. Wyeth to design another, larger house.
"By the mid-1920s Marjorie and E.F. Hutton were acknowledged young pacesetters in Palm Beach," wrote Ms. Rubin. "But to maintain that position…required a grander setting than Hogarcito."
The roughly $2.5 million cost of building the new house came in at twice the estimated budget, according to Ms. Rubin’s book, requiring 600 workers for more than three years.
"Apparently, building estimates are not worth the paper they are written on and as a result, they have sunk our finances beyond anything we had imagined," Ms. Post wrote to her cousin.
More:Elegant Palm Beach Home on One of the Area’s Most Prestigious Streets
The resulting mansion, Mar-a-Lago, featured a 34-foot-high living room with needlework tapestries from a Venetian palace. Ms. Post modeled the dining room after the Chigi Palace in Rome, with simulated marble columns, frescoes, Spanish chandeliers and Venetian chairs. An enormous patio required several tons of stone, and guest suites were designed to represent different regions: there was a Venetian room, a Portuguese room, a Dutch room and a Spanish room.
Ms. Post ran the mansion like a full-time enterprise, employing a seasonal staff of roughly 75. On her watch, the home had eight guest suites and 40 bedrooms for maids, valets, kitchen staff, chauffeurs, secretaries, laundresses and watchmen, according to Ms. Chung’s book "Living Artfully."
After her death the property was bequeathed to the National Parks Service. Mr. Trump bought it for roughly $10 million in 1985. He initially used it as a private home, marrying first lady Melania Trump there in 2005, but then began operating it as a private club. As president, Mr. Trump has used the property to host foreign leaders including Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"From growing up as a kid running around with my siblings, to now seeing my own children enjoy the property, it is so special to us," Eric Trump, Mr. Trump’s son, said in a written statement. He added: "The physical asset remains absolutely flawless." Gary Pohrer, a local agent with Douglas Elliman, estimated Mar-a-Lago could be worth $200 million to $300 million.
More:Sean Connery’s Former Home in the South of France Lists for €30 Million
The Adirondacks
Ms. Post’s roughly 200-acre summer retreat, Camp Topridge, was one of the so-called "Great Camps" of the Adirondacks. She bought the estate, located near Upper St. Regis Lake in New York state, with Mr. Hutton in the 1920s. With nearly 70 structures, including guest cabins and a main lodge, it could accommodate more than 100 people.
Ms. Post would host parties and events throughout the summer. Guests would arrive by private jet at a nearby airport, then travel by limousine to the lake, where they took a boat ride to the camp. By the time they arrived, the staff would have unpacked their luggage, laying their clothes out neatly in their cabins, according to Ms. Chung’s book. Despite the rustic surroundings, guests wore black tie-attire to dinner, which was often followed by square dancing.
Ms. Post left the camp to the state of New York, which put more than 100 acres of the property on the market. It is now owned by Harlan Crow, a Dallas-based real-estate magnate, who said he bought it in 1994 for "a couple million" dollars.
Mr. Crow, who uses the property as a summer retreat, demolished some of the aging structures, but kept others they were. When he bought the property many of Ms. Post’s belongings were still there, he said. Her cabin still contains her family photographs, paintings by grandchildren and little ceramic statues of dogs.
He said his family also found Ms. Post’s monogrammed napkins, which had a variety of initials thanks to her multiple marriages.
The property could be worth as much as $25 million today, said local agent Michael Raymaley of Merrill L. Thomas.
From Penta:A Buyer’s Market for the Bordeaux 2019 Vintage
Washington, D.C.
In 1935 Ms. Post divorced Mr. Hutton and married Joseph E. Davies, who would soon be appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Five years later Ambassador Davies purchased Tregaron, an estate on 20 acres in Washington’s Cleveland Park area. The circa 1912 property was designed by Charles Adams Platt.
The couple hosted teas, balls and galas at the property and entertained three U.S. presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, according to the nonprofit Tregaron Conservancy, which now owns the land around the house. They also tapped a local architect to build a dacha, or Russian folk house.
The roughly 25,000-square-foot mansion is now owned by the Washington International School, though the conservancy-owned land around it is open to the public.
After divorcing Mr. Davies in 1955, Ms. Post bought a Washington estate of her own. Known as Hillwood, the property spanned roughly 25 acres with a 25,000-square-foot, neo-Georgian mansion. The heiress envisioned the property as a place to house her enormous collections of art, furniture and antiques. She spent roughly two years renovating the property, developing formal gardens, a greenhouse and outbuildings for staff. In a sign of its Cold War era, the property had fallout shelters that could hold roughly 60 people.
Ms. Post often hosted formal dinners and garden parties at Hillwood, personally selecting the linens, silver and porcelain.
"A linen book was kept in the butler’s pantry, indicating an identification number for each lace style," Ms. Chung wrote.
Now the Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens, the home has been preserved largely as she left it.
More:What It Takes to Run Spelling Manor, The ‘Disneyland’ of Private Homes
If Hillwood or Tregaron were to come on the market, they would "shatter" price records, said Daniel Heider of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. He said Tregaron could be worth as much as $175 million, while Hillwood could fetch up to $250 million.
"Hillwood and Tregaron are in a league of their own," he said. "From provenance to privacy and sheer expanse, both estates are incomparable to even the Capital Region’s most notable and highest recorded transactions."
Hillwood in particular, he said, is "a time capsule to a most opulent bygone era."
