Vizcaya Museum and Gardens

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens stands on Biscayne Bay in Miami, Florida, completed in 1916 as a winter residence for the industrialist James Deering, an executive of International Harvester, to a design credited primarily to the architect F. Burrall Hoffman with landscape design by Diego Suarez and interior design by Paul Chalfin. The main house draws on Italian Renaissance villa architecture, while its ten acres of formal gardens, modeled on Italian and French garden traditions, include an elaborate stone barge breakwater in the bay just offshore, designed both to protect the shoreline from waves and to serve as a decorative garden folly in its own right. Deering built the estate using largely local labor and craftsmen, drawing skilled workers from the Bahamas among other sources, at a time when Miami was still a small and sparsely developed city, and the estate is credited with helping establish South Florida as a destination for elaborate seasonal residences. Miami-Dade County acquired Vizcaya in 1952, and it now operates as a museum and National Historic Landmark open to the public.