Addison Mizner - Last Years

Last Years

In 1927 Mizner built a house for John R. Bradley called Casa Serena in Colorado Springs. Several of Mizner's friends got together in 1928 to publish a folio monograph of his work. It was entitled Florida Architecture of Addison Mizner and featured 185 photographs of homes. Paris Singer contributed an introduction and Ida M. Tarbell wrote the text. After 1928 Mizner received several commissions but they came to a stop with the beginning of the world depression.

The one exception was the extensive Dieterich estate, 'Casa Bienvenida' (House of Welcome), on Park Lane in Montecito near Santa Barbara, California. He designed and directed its creation from 1929-1930. The significant new Mediterranean Revival estate's budget was unhindered by the 1929 Crash. The naturalistic landscape and formal gardens were designed by atmospheric painter and landscape designer Lockwood de Forest, Jr. (1850–1932). His water channels are replicas of those at Villa Lante at Bagnaia,near Viterbo in the Italian Tuscany region. Mizner integrated the principle indoor and outdoor rooms by a cloistered arcade with slender columns on three sides of a large courtyard. He linked that to the inclined axis with a pavilion in the form of a Palladian arch on a terraced stone pedestal at the vista terminus. Casa Bienvenida is extant and well maintained to the present day.

"The Spanish revival style here draws its forms and elements from medieval sources. Mizner used many high art details not generally found in this area....while maintaing the Santa Barbara characteristic of pure design."

In 1932 Mizner published The Many Mizners, an autobiography covering his youth, years in Alaska, and time in New York until the death of his mother. A second volume telling of his work in Florida was begun but never completed. Mizner died in 1933 of a heart attack in Palm Beach.