OLD FLORESTA HISTORIC DISTRICT

In October 1925, architect Addison Mizner announced construction of houses for his company’s executives and his brother, the Reverend Henry Mizner, in the subdivision now known as Old Floresta. The Robinson Company, a New York contractor building the Cloister Inn in Boca Raton, won the contract for 29 Mizner-designed houses. With the end of the real estate boom in 1926, the Mizner Development Corporation collapsed before Robinson could complete the houses. The Chicago partners, headed by Hermann V. von Holst, from whom Mizner purchased the land for Old Floresta, held the mortgage and filed for foreclosure. Von Holst then supervised the completion of the unfinished houses, proposed new names for the streets, and suggested calling the subdivision Floresta, “a delightful rural place” in Spanish. Since the 1920s, Old Floresta, with its Spanish-style architecture of rough-finished stucco walls, wrought iron balconies, and barrel tile roofs, combined with the subdivision’s narrow tree-lined streets and lush landscaping, has remained one of Boca Raton’s most distinctive neighborhoods. In 1990, Old Floresta became Boca Raton’s first historic district.