Furniture and Finishes at Mar-a-Lago
Mar-a-Lago is filled with fine furniture, art objects, and ornaments that Mrs. Post collected during her travels or has commissioned especially for the house. This is illustrated by the central and most important room in the house, the living room, sometimes called the gold room.
The Entrance Hall is entered by way of the main doorway from the porte-cochere. It provides access to the living room, men’s and women’s cloak rooms, minor entrance to the dining room, and to telephone and janitor closets. The diagonal floor pattern of 9″ by 9″ clay tile has a white marble tile border.
There is a high wainscoting of antique Spanish tiles in a variety of patterns. The basic colors are blue, yellow, and white. In the center of the east wall is a fireplace with conical hood recessed in a stepped tile opening. A clock with a tile face is set into a balustrade which surrounds the opening of the hood. Flanking the fireplace are corbeled niches containing early Italian copies of Roman busts. Corresponding niches and recess on the vest wall contain a table and two Dresden urns.
The beamed ceiling of traditional Spanish design is painted black, red, and buff and Is hung from steel eye beams. The ceiling panels contain figures of lions and griffins which correspond to the crests of the Merriweather and Post families which hang high on the walls. The hall contains eight old Spanish lanterns, four in a star shape and two, in the center, which are rectangular and gilded.
The round-arched door to the living room has two wooden leaves divided into 35 panels which contain a metal boss on the hall side and a gilded cherub on the living room side. The iron door pull is in a mother-and-child motif. Four quatrefoil-studded doors lead from the hall to the secondary spaces.