PALM BEACH HISTORY

Some of the names may have changed but the very essence of this highly coveted 14-mile-long strip of paradise has not. In the old days, Palm Beach was the backdrop of an ultra-elite social season originally only 10 weeks long - mid-December to Feb. 23, the day after the George Washington Birthday Ball at Henry Flagler's mansion. When the social season ended in Palm Beach, it shifted and scattered north to New York (the Hamptons), Massachusetts (Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard), Rhode Island (Newport) and Maine (Bar Harbor), and to the mid-western mansions of the world's most affluent leaders of industry. And while changing times and the advent of air conditioning have quadrupled the length of the season, now from November to April, Palm Beach has kept pace.

Henry Morrison Flagler "created" Palm Beach when he opened the Royal Poinciana Hotel in the winter of 1894 and claimed the island as the country's premier winter resort. Flagler's beloved mansion "Whitehall," which he built in 1901 for his wife, Mary Lily Kenan, was sold by his heirs in 1925 and used as an elegant hotel residence until 1959, when Jean Flagler Matthews purchased the property, acquired many of the mansion's original furnishings and opened it as the Flagler Museum off Cocoanut Row, says James Augustine Ponce, resident historian for the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce and The Breakers hotel.

A descendent of the country's oldest documented family, Ponce was born in St. Augustine in 1917 and grew up in Flagler's presence. Ponce's father, a mortician, was the one to bury Flagler when he died in 1913 - "his career's crowning glory," says Ponce from the modest West Palm Beach home in which he has lived since 1958.

Ponce, a Palm Beach fixture, worked at The Colony when it was painted purple, The Brazilian Court when it was painted robin's egg blue, and the Holiday Inn where the Four Seasons now sits. He retired as assistant manager at The breakers in 1982 and now functions as the hotel's resident historian, tour guide and lecturer.

"In the mid-30s, you can't imagine how undeveloped the island was, "Ponce says. "There was an army base at the northern end of the island, in charge of coastal defense to make sure that German subs weren't coming ashore, and The Breakers and Biltmore hotels were new, and Whitehall with its 10-story addition was quite a sight to see. I was also lucky enough to see a portion of the Royal Poinciana Hotel before it was torn down."