Ned looked at me askance. “You’re going to tell Marion Wyeth to build you a compound of log cabins overlooking the Atlantic? What’ll he use—palm trees?”
I glowered. “Not that look…but that same idea,” I said. “One central building and a series of outdoor terraces and patios leading to surrounding buildings. So it can feel like a home, but also a place where we can host and entertain.”
Wyeth was not enthusiastic about the plan, but Ned did not want to fire him. “How about we ask Mizner to join the team?” he suggested. Addison Mizner was another sought-after Palm Beach builder, popular for his sprawling palazzos that lined the ocean.
“No,” I replied, without a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t want just another Mizner mansion. I want something different.”
Flo was over, since he and Ned were about to leave for a fishing trip—and God only knew what other activities—off of Key West. He had been listening to this exchange, and now he interjected: “How about Joseph Urban?”
Flo was an expert at spending my money, and I rarely agreed with his choices, but this time I was desperate enough that my interest was piqued. “Who is Joseph Urban?” I’d never heard the name, but in this case, that worked in the man’s favor.
“I hired him to do the stage sets for the Follies,” Flo said. “The guy is a genius. He built for Emperor Franz Joseph before the Great War. Grew up in Austria-Hungary. Built for the other nobles, too. Even the royals in Egypt. He’s eclectic, but top-notch.”
“Eclectic is good,” I said. “I want eclectic.”
And the man, I soon saw for myself, proved as colorful in his personal appearance and mannerisms as in his background and building aesthetics. I flew Joseph Urban down to Palm Beach the next week to tour the property with me and hear about my hopes. He was a massive bear of a man, weighing nearly three hundred pounds, I guessed, whose small bow tie seemed fairly ready to pop off his thick neck. He huffed and sweated as we traipsed around the untamed property, speaking fast in his guttural Austrian accent as he stepped over thick roots and ducked under dense fruit trees and mangrove branches. Standing there in my work boots and my rubber gloves, I threw everything at him: I wanted something entirely original. I wanted a camp-like layout with a gracious main building and a complex of surrounding outbuildings. I wanted to draw out the natural beauty and whimsy of the lush tropical jungle in which we were building. I wanted to enjoy sweeping views of sea and lake. I wanted to be protected from hurricanes. I wanted it to be a place for intimate family visits and grand, lavish parties. I wanted it to be the most thrilling thing that Palm Beach society had ever seen. At the end of our interview, Urban nodded slowly, silently, as if absorbing and assimilating all of the facts I’d just thrown at him.
The next morning Joseph Urban came over for coffee and laid out his response to my architectural riddles. “Madame Hutton, I can do this for you.”
I laughed at his plain, matter-of-fact self-assurance. Unblinking, chin tilted down as if he were bracing for some ride on an unbroken stallion, Urban went on: “I see influences from the Spanish and the Mediterranean that are so popular in this area, but let’s pull in Baroque and Gothic and Arabian details as well. I see a central building with a soaring tower. If this is your palace, then that is your keep. Terraces and cloistered patios will link to other buildings. You want to entertain, yes? You have a big family? We’ll need many rooms. And this land! Madame Hutton, we don’t just tame this jungle; we work with it. We’ll have lovely lawns that go right up to the water. The best vistas. We’ll have fruit trees, and a golf course, and fountains. We’ll have gardens better than anything the Moors built at the Alhambra. We’ll have arches like a Venetian palazzo, and we’ll have friezes like an ancient Greek temple.”
As Urban spoke, his words clipped by his hard-hitting Teutonic consonants, his hands gesturing wildly with pencil poised between thumb and pointer, I nodded enthusiastically. Everything he said sounded outlandish, but the man was artistic and inventive, and certainly not afraid of doing something wholly new and different. By the end of our conversation, I had something to tell him: “I want to hire you, Mr. Urban.”
He pressed his hands to his waist, eyeing me like a stern governess, a reaction far different than what I would have expected, considering the massive job I was trying to give him. Then he frowned, tucking his pencil behind his ear. “There is just one small thing we must discuss, Madame Hutton, before I can accept this job.”