Phipps Family History: Casa Bendita

Guests touring Westbury House learn that Jay Phipps owned several seasonal residences most notably Casa Bendita located on the Atlantic Coast in Palm Beach, Florida. 

Hand painted slide of the interior swimming pool at Casa Bendita from the Garden Clubs of America Collection of the Smithsonian Institution

Just over a century ago in February 1922, a small society item in the New York Tribune noted: “Mr and Mrs. John Phipps, whose Spanish house is about completed, today gave a swimming party for their children in their pool.” A month earlier, the Tribune reported that the house wouldn’t be completed in time for use that season but described the house’s most significant feature: “…a swimming pool 24 by 20 feet, is in the left wing, with a beautiful arched gallery and a tower for diving.”  

Since the early 1910s, Jay and his family spent the winter months in Palm Beach but opted to rent “cottages” at the Breakers Hotel and at other locations during their typical three-month stay. Around 1921, Jay commissioned the noted architect Addison Mizner to create a winter residence on a ridge facing the ocean. Jay’s father Henry and his brother Hal purchased several parcels in the northern section of Palm Beach for the family’s winter homes as well as investments for residential and commercial use. 

From a 1923 profile in The Architectural Forum: 

For this beautiful structure, the architect, Addison Mizner, has used sandstone of a rich yellow which adds particular interest to a building designed in a restrained and highly refined version of the Spanish renaissance. The low pitched roofs, placed upon several slightly different levels, and the floors of loggias and even of certain rooms are of handmade tile produced in Florida, both the glazed and the unglazed ranging from pink, through different shades of brown, to black. The house is furnished with tapestries and other carefully selected Spanish and Italian antiques which have been arranged under the architect’s direction.  

Left to right: Henry Carnegie Phipps' 'Heamaw', John Shaffer Phipps' 'Casa Bendita', Charles A. Munn's 'Amado', and Gurnee Munn's 'Louwana' Estates, Palm Beach, FL. Photo: Robert Yarnall Richie

And like their life on Long Island, family members were also neighbors. Next door to Casa Bendita was Heamaw—the winter residence Jay’s brother Hal (Henry C.) designed and built in 1916 by F. Burrall Hoffman, who also designed the famous Villa Vizcaya (now Vizaya Museum and Gardens). And adjacent to that parcel was the former home of Michael P. Grace, Dita’s father, who also built a home in 1916—a residence was later to be known as Los Incas. Nearby was Villa Artemis—also designed by Hoffman—the Florida residence for Jay and Hal’s sister, Amy Guest. (The residence next door to Amy’s was Otto Kahn’s Villa Oheka). Jay’s youngest brother Howard would later build a residence in Gulf Stream, a community located south of Palm Beach, which the Phipps brothers would develop into one of the leading residential communities in the country.

For close to 40 years Casa Bendita was the center of Jay and Dita’s family and social life. Numerous social columns in the Florida press reported on their comings and goings, and events they hosted. 

From the New York Daily News, March 12, 1930:

Frederick Guest's 'Villa Artemis' Estate (Left) and Otto Hermann Kahn's 'Villa Oheka' (Right). Photo: Robert Yarnall Richie

Most of the Rolls Royces in the colony were gathered in front of Casa Bendita on North Ocean Blvd. this afternoon while their mighty owners drank tea and listened to the songs of Mme. Nina Koshetz. Mrs. Henry Phipps, the dowager of this tremendously wealthy clan, and her daughter, Mrs. Frederick E. Guest, were at home to the most socially eligible of this colony's satellites at Casa Bendita, the home of Mr. and Mrs. John S. Phipps. Some 200 guests attended the musical and tea party. The Phippses and the guests are in no wise to be confused with Palm Beach's circus gentry. They come to this gold coast, not for the whoopee gaiety it offers, but because they find it a delightful winter home. 

Following Jay’s death at Casa Bendita in 1958, the property was purchased in 1960 from Casa Bendita, Inc. by Jay’s youngest Michael, who in turn sold it to a developer in 1961. Like many of other residences designed by Mizner in the 1920s this developer sold off furniture and furnishings in public auction and razed the building in February 1961. As Helen Van Hoy Smith, a Miami Herald reporter, noted in January 1961 about the pending demise of Casa Bendita, “the servant problem and a desire for more informed living is given as the underlying cause of the demolition of these great houses.” 

~Paul Hunchak, Director of Public Programs and Visitor Services