F. Burrall Hoffman - Hoffman & Vizcaya

Hoffman & Vizcaya

Attained through his Harvard connections, Hoffman’s first large and most notable commission was James Deering’s Villa Vizcaya in Miami, Florida.

Wealthy industrialist, James Deering and his art director, Paul Chalfin spent many years amassing a large collection of architectural and decorative artifacts from around the Europe. In 1912, thirty -year -old F. Burrall Hoffman was hired to design a winter home for Deering to showcase his collection. Deering purchased 130 acres of swampy mangrove on the shore of Biscayne Bay. As early 1913, Hoffman began sketches for the site. Inspired by the Villa Rezzonico in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, Deering and Chalfin decided that the palatial bayfront mansion would be an Italian Style. Typical of his Beaux-Art training, Hoffman designed a roughly square building that functioned on two axes intersecting at the center of the courtyard. The two axes, major and minor correspond to the movement of more important to less important features of the house. The major axis travels east-west from the entrance through the court to the waterside terrace. The minor axis outlines the secondary movement to the gardens. Hoffman ingeniously designed the public rooms in a U-shape to indicate the suggested movement of guests from loggia to entrance, continuing around to the dining room, while providing the living room and dining room direct access to the waterside terrace.

Hoffman worked in collaboration with Paul Chalfin until 1916 - when the project was turned entirely over to Chalfin for furnishing. Deering arrived at Villa Vizcaya on his yacht, Nepenthe on Christmas Day, 1916. Deering spent winters at the home until his death in 1925.

After an Architectural Review in 1917 cited Chalfin and Hoffman as “associate architects” and failed to mention the contribution of landscape architect, Diego Suarez, Hoffman took issue with Chalfin’s oversight and never spoke to him again. Hoffman, true to his reputation as the “gentleman architect” never took action to correct the article.

In 1953, Dade County purchased the home from the Deering heirs. In March of that year, the New York Times published an article that completely ignored Hoffman’s contribution to the design of Villa Vizcaya (only attributing the plumbing to him) and credited Paul Chalfin. After thirty-five years of ignoring Chalfin’s claims to the architecture of Vizcaya, Hoffman met with an attorney and planned to sue over the gross misrepresentation of the article. A retraction was printed on May 17, 1953.