Photos: Inside Vizcaya, the Gilded Age Mansion in the Heart of Miami

Struggling with illness toward the end of his life, James Deering came to Miami, then a small city surrounded by mangrove forests and wetlands, looking for tropical warmth, which was believed to help improve health.

By the turn of the century, the Deering family had begun to develop estates around South Florida, with patriarch William Deering purchasing a home in Coconut Grove in 1900.

By the time James Deering began building Vizcaya, his brother, Charles Deering, was also developing a winter home in the south of Miami. The property, known today as Deering Estate, also operates as a museum and is open to the public.

Expanding over 45,225 square feet, Vizcaya’s main house features the living spaces of James Deering himself, his guests, and the house staff.

Envisioned by interior designer Paul Chalfin, Vizcaya took inspiration from the Italian Renaissance adapted to South Florida’s subtropical climate, and showcases furniture, artworks, and artifacts purchased by Chalfin and Deering on their travels to Europe.

Although Miami’s population was estimated to be only 10,000 in 1916, the construction of the Vizcaya estate employed an estimated 1,000 workers, many of whom were Black immigrants from the Bahamas.

Apart from the main house, Vizcaya is also home to the Vizcaya Village, the historic quarters of the mansion’s workers and farmers that allowed Vizcaya to serve as a self-sufficient farm-to-table estate. The Village expands over 12 acres and includes 11 “architecturally significant” buildings, according to the museum’s website.

Lined with tropical plants like palms and philodendrons, the courtyard highlights South Florida’s natural beauty while adhering to the mansion’s European inspirations.

While today the courtyard is covered by a glass canopy that allows for the estate’s air conditioning, it was originally open to the elements, allowing the tropical climate to seep into the main house.

Featuring marble floors and columns and decorated ceilings, the East Loggia was meant to serve as Vizcaya’s main entrance for guests arriving by sea, which was Deering’s intended — and preferred — way of entering the mansion.

It was used as an entrance for guests who arrived by boat, while the current main entrance of the museum was used as a back entrance for guests arriving by car.

The room also features a model boat hanging from its ceiling in honor of the explorers who inspired Deering’s interpretation of Vizcaya.

James Deering was heir to the International Harvester manufacturing firm, which produced tractors and other agricultural machinery, and he worked as its vice president from 1902 until 1909.

Deering might have been one of the first prominent Florida “snowbirds,” retirees who travel South during the colder months.

His downstairs library, located in the northwest corner of the main house, is located steps from the entrance hall that welcomes guests. It features Deering’s personal book collection, desks for him and a secretary, and seats for business guests.

When closed, the door leading to the next room — a reception room meant for entertaining guests — is concealed within the book-lined walls.

The reception room is lined with tropical-inspired silk panels showing palm trees.

Our tour guide brought our attention to the ceiling, which is decorated with sculpted panels that extend to the sides of the room. The ceiling was imported from Venice and purchased before construction on the property was finished. By the time workers were putting up the decorations in the mansion, they realized that the ceiling panel did not fit the room dimensions, leading to the restructuring of the panel, which curved into the walls.

“We should remember that this house was built during the First World War,” curator Flaminia Gennari said in the audio tour. “So to import large quantities from Italy in the middle of the war was very complicated.”

Wired throughout the house, Vizcaya features a highly innovative telephone system for the time. Only 17 years before the beginning of Vizcaya’s construction did the Miami Telephone Company begin providing telephone service to the city.

Vizcaya’s telephones also featured automatic electric exchange, allowing users to connect directly to the number they dialed without going through a human operator.

The telephone room, located between two of Vizcaya’s main entertainment rooms, was meant for guests to communicate privately without disturbing the flow of the entertainment.

The living room, with its 1600s limestone fireplace, features some of Vizcaya’s most impressive items, including an “admiral carpet” originally commissioned in the 1450s by the grandfather of King Ferdinand II of Spain, the Spanish king who sponsored Christopher Columbus’ exploration of the Americas.

The room also features throne-like armchairs where US President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II sat in 1987 during the Pope’s visit to America.

A centerpiece of the room is the Welte Philharmonic Organ, which was meant to fill the house with music through elaborate sound systems. Designed for guests rather than full-time professional players, the organ uses perforated paper rolls to aid the musicians’ performance by adjusting notes and volume.

Concealing the organ pipes is an oil painting, which was cut in half to cover wooden doors.

“Chalfin had the idea of cutting it in half and using it as the doors of the organs, which is not a very respectful thing to do for a representation of the Virgin Mary, the child, and the saints, but it somehow testifies to the freedom and positive carelessness that they had around old objects,” Gennari said in the audio tour.

While Deering himself didn’t eat in the formal dining room often, he made sure that the room was impressively decorated for his guests.

Sitting to the side is the room’s most awe-inspiring feature: a marble tabletop sitting on carved bases resembling mythical creatures, which were historical artifacts unearthed near Pompeii, dating back to the times before Mount Vesuvius’ eruption.

The colorful glass panels, designed for Vizcaya, feature the estate’s main symbols: the seahorse and the caravan.

Providing a view of the garden through the glass panels and double doors, the enclosed loggia allowed guests to take in the garden views while staying cool from the Florida sun.

Aside from giving guests an inside view of the gardens from the ground level, the room also connects the outdoors to the rest of the mansion.

When designing Vizcaya, Deering asked for the main kitchen to be built upstairs as he didn’t want the smell of food to flood the main entertaining rooms on the first floor. To facilitate the transportation of meals and the serving of guests to the dining room, the entertaining rooms, and the loggia, he built a downstairs serving pantry.

Today, the serving pantry cabinets display one set of Deering’s fine dining china, the one designated for his 80-foot-long luxury yacht, Nepenthe. Commissioned in 1912 to be shipped from Europe, the original set of china purchased by Deering was transported to America as cargo aboard the Titanic. After the ship sank, a replacement set was ordered and is now displayed.

Throughout the house, Deering incorporated cutting-edge technology, including annunciators with bells connected throughout the house that Deering or guests could ring at any time to get the house staff’s attention.

Another then-advanced feature of the serving kitchen were its refrigerators, which were rare at the time. The kitchen also featured a warming oven that helped keep food warm while guests were served.

Connecting to the upstairs kitchen, which serves as the house’s main cooking area, was a dumbwaiter: a food elevator meant to carry the food cooked upstairs to the downstairs plating area, where staff would then take it to the main entertaining rooms, like the dining and sitting rooms.

Nine of the bedrooms were dedicated to guests and each was given a name and decorated uniquely, showcasing the artifacts and furniture purchased by Deering and Chalfin on trips to Europe.

While not open to the public, an additional 14 rooms housed staff.

Deering was motivated to move to South Florida because of his illness, so accessibility features were built throughout the house, such as the elevator he would take when using a wheelchair or to avoid walking upstairs.

Today, the elevator isn’t open to the public, and the museum’s second floor is not wheelchair accessible.

Connected to Deering’s bedroom and bathroom, the sitting room was his office where he would tend to business and personal matters, such as sorting his mail.

The decoration style was inspired by Napoleonic France.

Unmarried all his life, Deering’s room features a single bed rather than a larger size, and his room is furnished for practicality rather than aesthetics.

Opening up to a balcony, Deering’s bathroom looks over Biscayne Bay and has one of the best views of the house, although it is not accessible to the public today.

The closed-off balcony also leads to a secret door to the Espagnolette, the guest bedroom located next to his, usually reserved for Deering’s dearest guests.

A set of spiral staircases leads up to the South tower, one of the two guest suites overlooking the estate.

The corner room atop the North tower was designed to transport guests to Europe.

“Water reflects upwards to the ceiling and the sound of waves is audible in this room, precisely as upon the quay of this great canal of Venice,” noted Chalfin about the room, according to the mansion’s website.

A central piece in the room is a large wardrobe assembled with 1700s Venetian panels, as well as the antique painted closet doors.

Back on the second floor, the breakfast room was the central entertaining spot.

The room is lined with oil paintings depicting ocean scenes, and the windows slide into pocket doors, revealing views of the garden.

It also features a sound system, with a piano hidden away in a room off the spiral staircase next door and connected to the breakfast room through floor vents that allow sound to travel into the space.

Most times, Deering opted to dine in this room rather than the formal dining space.

Designed to maximize staff efficiency, the main kitchen upstairs has different areas for different tasks, including separate sinks for washing dishes and produce. It also features ice boxes, or refrigerators of the time, powered by salt water.

During Deering’s time at the estate, Vizcaya employed two French chefs dedicated to food and pastries.

Food served at the mansion was sourced from the staff village built across the street, where a farm provided vegetables, dairy, chicken, herbs, and citrus.

“You and I could come down and drive into the farm area, stop and buy a dozen Deering eggs and take them home and have them for breakfast, and I think that was probably particularly important during World War I,” historian Arva Moore Parks said in the audio tour. “He was able to supply not only himself but his workers also.”

Inspired by 17th- and 18th-century Italian and French villas, the Vizcaya gardens feature a variety of scenes, from a garden theater to multiple paths and mazes, intended to highlight and enhance the native South Florida flora surrounding the estate.

The original layout of Vizcaya featured over 180 acres of subtropical forests. Today, that number has gone down to 50 acres.

On September 10, 1987, President Ronald Reagan welcomed Pope John Paul II at Vizcaya, where the two conversed while exploring the gardens and the estate.

Located at the top of garden mounds designed to block the reflection of water ponds into the main house, the garden casino — Italian for “little house” — was a space where Deering and his guests could take in the garden views or enjoy the subtropical weather without being in direct contact with the sun.

Inside the building, a painted ceiling depicts heavenly images. Underneath, bathrooms and other now closed-off areas hide under decorated ceilings.

Originally, the casino overlooked a water park part of the estate, where gondolas would be launched, a crucial part of Deering’s vision for Vizcaya. Today, the water park no longer exists, and the land is instead taken up by a Catholic church, hospital, and schools after the Deering family sold part of the property to the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine in 1946.

While today a café sits underneath the mansion, the space served as a leisure center during Deering’s stay. The rooms were filled with billiard tables, bowling alleys, and leather chairs. Hidden underneath the billiards table was also a roulette table, which Deering often used when his college friends visited the estate.

The mansion, which opened at the peak of the Prohibition era, also had a decent supply of liquor, which Deering smuggled into the estate and hid in secret bars and cellars.

Tucked next to the leisure rooms underneath the main house is the half-indoor swimming pool, in which Deering is said to have only swum once.

When he first moved into his winter home in December 1916, Deering arrived by sea on what he intended was the front entrance to Vizcaya.

Opening up to the Biscayne Bay, the waterfront side of the property features a stone barge, a sculpted structure that acts as a breakwater and protects the main house from changing tides and waves.

Purchased from the Deering family by Miami-Dade County for $1 million in 1962, Vizcaya today operates as a museum open to the public and for private reservations.

The estate is often the background of Quinceañera pictures from Miami’s large Hispanic population. Walking around the gardens, I saw multiple young women dressed in extravagant gowns posing in the many stunning locations of the estate.

Along with being a photographic hot spot, Vizcaya also hosts private events, from Miami Swim Week runway shows to floral-decorated weddings in the gardens.

Today, the estate remains an icon of Miami, a city that many would often relate to modern luxury rather than the old and classic wealth on display in Gilded Age-style mansions like Vizcaya.