"Cielito Lindo" (Palm Beach)

 house, place with historical importance

Cielito Lindo was built in 1924 by Marion Sims Wyeth. This beautifully restored Mediterranean home was originally part of a 124-room estate designed for the Woolworth family. It has 5 bedrooms, plus a 3rd floor Tower suite and staff quarters. Amazing outdoor gardens and terraces. Master bedroom, guest room and tower enjoy ocean and lake views. All rooms are large throughout with very high ceilings. One of the largest of Palm Beach's Jazz Age palazzos, the 45,000-square-foot "little bit of heaven" was orriginally sequestered in the midst of 16 lush ocean-to-lake acres. Built by Marion Sims Wyeth in 1927 for dime-store heiress Jessie Woolworth Donahue{daughter of FW}, the 135-room house was "one of the finest Hispanic-American houses in that land of magical dwellings - Palm Beach," enthused Arts & Decoration magazine the following year, citing its distinctive Moorish brickwork and wooden window grills.

But in 1948 after the suicide of her husband, James, Jessie sold the house to developers, who subdivided the property and built Kings Road straight through the middle of her former living room. Wyeth himself devised a plan to save the original mansion by breaking it up into five separate homes. Yet Cielito Lindo was so large that one of these "smaller" homes (on the south side of Kings Road) still contained 20 rooms - and retained the name, Cielito Lindo.