Building Description The Breakers Hotel, Palm Beach Florida
The over-all north-south length is 450', and the original east-west dimension was 375' prior to the addition of 1970 on the east. There were 425 guest rooms and 300 servants' rooms as originally designed. There were seven floors above the public rooms in the central pavilion and five floors on the east-west pavilions which flank it. It was basically H-shaped, closed on the east by the one-story grand loggia, symmetrically disposed about the east-west axis.
The porte cochere opens from the west and is set in a three-sided courtyard between the north porch and the service wing still further behind it on the north, and the wheel-chair patio (where wicker wheel chairs were once stored) on the south, and the shops in line with it on the extreme south boundary.
The main entrance doors of the porte cochere open on the east, and lead to a north-south, lying symmetrical lobby, at right angles to the central patio beyond.
The north end of the lobby open's into the east-west dining promenade and east-west dining room. The promenade borders the central patio on the north, and the first, or east-west dining room, on the north opens still further to the north into the circular dining room, which was a later addition. East of the first dining room is the northeast lounge, now called the Magnolia Room, which faces on the gardens and the ocean.
At the south end of the main north-south lobby, behind the porte cochere, is another east-west promenade bordering the central patio on the south, the promenade lined with shops also to the south. At the east end of the shopping arcade there is a south-east lounge called the Gold Room, which balances the northeast lounge or Magnolia Room, both rooms looking out on the gardens and the ocean terrace to the east.
Between these lounges, and east of the central patio, lies the grand loggia, originally facing the ocean on the east, as well as the central patio on the west. The grand loggia is now called the Mediterranean Room, and the east side has been closed by the most recent hotel addition which provides meeting rooms and convention facilities under a bedroom block on the east.
