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THE ISLAND OF REST bermuda

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ay Bermuda and people imagine upper crust Americans

P R E V I O U S S P R E A D: bermuda’s unmistakeable historic architecture - with coral stone walls, chimneys, distinctive roofs & towers, over looking Pitts bay in hamilton.

O P P O S I T E: A pony cart conveys a family along the oleander filled daniel’s head road, in the quieter days before bermuda’s ban on automobiles was lifted.

OV E R L E A F: A typical bermuda landscape with verdant inlets, anchored sailboats and oceanfront houses seen from the top of the Gibbs lighthouse.

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enjoying decorous holidays in the clearest water, with pastelcolored houses scattered on hillsides overlooking peaceful bays with sailboats everywhere dotting the sea. Bermuda has always had a close connection to the United States. The island’s strategic location on the British Empire’s trade routes meant that during the American Civil War, Bermuda, like the Bahamas, was active in circumventing the blockade of southern ports. Bermuda’s clipper ships connected New England, Britain and the West Indies, carrying the island’s agricultural produce and returning with needed supplies. Since the late eighteenth century, Bermuda’s climate had been praised as healthful for invalids—so many of those ships returned with American and Canadian passengers sent to enjoy a cure at the Island of Rest Recognizing that wealthy Americans felt very much at home on their island, Bermuda took a good look at itself and took action to cement that appeal to outsiders. The Trade Development Board, a group of business leaders and tourism promoters, understood they were selling much more than a pleasant climate and a sparkling sea. American visitors had found in Bermuda an antidote to the upheavals being faced back home as the country industrialized. Americans made fabulously wealthy by industry, sought to escape that industrial reality—in exclusive retreats where they would be surrounded by their own kind. Bermuda’s colonial elite boasted roots dating to the Plymouth and Jamestown colonies and their traditional British values and polite natives made Americans feel safe and welcome. Cars and trucks had been banned on the island because they were felt to be at odds with the simple, uncomplicated past for which American visitors felt nostalgic. School children were trained to be helpful to

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the tourists. The island’s leaders worked to preserve the landscape as well as the society, grooming Bermuda to meet the expectations of the wealthy American tourism. Visitors to the island were considered guests and were expected to behave like ladies and gentlemen—even while enjoying a break from Prohibition. Compared to other islands, Bermuda offered a slower paced escape with no night clubs or gambling—a warm weather holiday full of reassuring traditions like buggy rides, cricket games and dressing for dinner.

In addition to the excellent year-round weather, visitors to Bermuda were offered a variety of activities. Tennis had arrived from England in 1873 and had then been introduced to the US from Bermuda. Since the 1880’s, cricket has been played, with the annual Bermuda Cup Match, pitting teams from the east and the west of the island. Bermuda’s love of ocean racing had its origins in the local dinghy competitions of the 1880’s. Since 1906, the sailing world gathered on the island for the Newport - Bermuda yacht race, celebrated with tradition at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. The Mid Ocean Golf Course, in a class comparable to St Andrews, was built in 1924 as part of the Tucker’s Town development designed to attract the well-healed with its hotel, country club and housing sites. Anglers cruised the hundreds of miles of coral reefs surrounding the island that were teeming with fish or participated in annual sports-fishing tournaments.

Starting in 1928, the Furness Withy “lady boats”, featuring pools and casinos, brought tourists from Canada and New York to enjoy a Bermuda holiday. The island’s pleasant summer weather and warm ocean temperatures began attracting year-round visitors in the 1920’s, when sun tanning became fashionable among the world’s elite. In the 1930’s, SS This & the SS that were launched, nicknamed the Millionaire’s Ships, because of the wealthy northeastern visitors they transported to the island weekly.

Bermuda’s distinctive architecture - an adaptation of the English medieval cottage style to the island’s climate and locally-available materials—was an important element in the island’s brand identity. Simple cottages - “amusing little pink and white houses … scattered like bonbons on the rolling hillsides” - were found behind the coral stone walls of gardens

Considered by many to be bermuda’s most beautiful beach, Jobsons Cove in Warwick is protected by dramatic coral stone cliffs .

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A B OV E: the isle of tradition: dress uniforms & white gloves at the 1967 Queen’s birthday garden party at hamilton’s Government house, the 19th C. italianate style residence of bermuda’s Governor, lord martonmere, at left O P P O S I T E: the island’s vernacular architecture, recalls the medieval cottage of rural English villages. the houses of new American residents were inspired by the organic way in which bremuda’s historic houses have grown over time.

A pair of chimneys anchors the fanciful stepped gable of the Globe hotel built in 1699 to serve as the bermuda Government house in St George’s.

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brimming with oleanders and hibiscus. Early American tourists had rented private houses for a season before going on to build themselves permanent retreats. While visitors settled throughout the island, Tuckers Town was designed to capture the upscale American market. Three hundred one-acre building lots surrounded the members-only Mid Ocean Golf Course, its clubhouse, tennis courts and bridle paths, set in a landscape created by the Olmsted Brothers.

Vincent Astor’s, Ferry Reach, was one of several getaways built by Americans in the 1930s. Astor’s New York designer, Carl Landefeld, worked with local architects NW and JF Hutchings, in the charming Bermuda style. They built “a maze of garden walls, scalloped roofs, rusticated doorways and a dozen stepped chimneys—a self-sufficient

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village arranged around lawns and garden terraces overlooking the St. George’s coast”. The house illustrates the casual, organic way in which Bermuda’s historic homes grew over time- creating a picturesque assembly of elements ensuring the sprawling mansion never looked out of scale. Houseguests usually arrived via Astor’s miniature railway –passing the tennis court, swimming pool and the boathouse where the cruiser, Little Noormahal was kept waiting. They descended at the green-painted, pentagonal bar which was informally furnished with wicker seating and straw rugs, collections of porcelain animals and two dramatic aquariums. Picturesque elements corresponded to different activities in the house: the lookout tower where guests gathered for coffee after dinner or Mrs. Astor’s taffeta-decorated sitting room set up in the

quaint old buttery. Visitors arriving via horse and buggy came through the tower entry, continuing to the unpretentious Living Room whose comfortable seating was covered in aquamarine and brown chintz. Here, New York decorator Anne Cameron Tiffany had installed a fireplace mantle designed by Thomas Chippendale. The New England style Dining Room connected to the upper terrace, where—thanks to the seasonable climate - most meals were served al fresco. Guest enjoyed breakfast on the private terraces provided for each guest suite.

The house was kept open year round for the stream of guests enjoying the Astors’ hospitality. The Bermuda style architecture, so adeptly used at Ferry Reach, would become popular in Palm Beach of the 1930’s, interpreted by American architects Maurice Fatio, John Volk and Howard Major.

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LEVITTOWN FOR MILLIONAIRES jamaica

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A B OV E: this aerial view of round hill illustrates the low scale of the hotel buildings & how individual cottages were seemlessly integrated into the landscape - the Paley house & swimming pool are at the left on the waterfront.

O P P O S I T E: round hill’s creator, John Pringle, welcomes a returning guest with open arms, embodying the cozy ambience that kept guests coming back to his exclusive playpen (top). from the moment it opened, the press emphasized the trend-setting fashions favored by the round hill’s ladies - evenings were dressy, giving the ladies an opportunity to wear their latest (middle). hollywood stars Paul newman and wife Joanne Woodward enjoy a break at round hill among business, entertainment & the art world guests enjoying the club-like exclusivity & privacy (bottom).

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writers Lucien Freud, Stephen Spender, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. Fleming, his wife Blanche Blackwell, Coward & XXX formed an incestuous group that Coward coldly dissected in his play “Volcano”….

Jamaicans had been welcoming visitors to hotels like the Myrtle Bank, Constant Springs and Titchfield since the 1890s –when the island’s Tourism Association began promoting Jamaica as a health and pleasure resort. Jamaica is known as a continent in miniature because of its varied natural features - waterfalls and lush vegetation, rivers, cool mountains, tropical uplands teeming with parrots, and everywhere the sand and sea. As on the larger, more historic, Caribbean islands, visitors enjoyed golf, horse-racing, sailing and tennis at the social clubs that had welcomed generations of the British colonial establishment.

In the 1930’s, international visitors began building warm weather escapes on Jamaica. In 1938, New York decorators Billy Baldwin and Ruby Ross Wood created a whimsical décor for American John K. Rexford in the mountains overlooking

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Montego Bay. The sophisticated mix included furniture painted in amusing trompe l’oeil, iron garden chairs brought indoors, plus a liberal use of fringe, grass floor mats and fanciful curtains. Everything was painted white, with the bold colors of tropical flowers stenciled onto white sailcloth slipcovers. Nearby, composer Oscar Hammerstein lived in Highland House, a mountaintop cluster of cedar shingled pepper-pot roofs that had been built in the 1940’s for British actress Gladys Cooper. In 1955, architect John Volk and decorator Polly Jessup, both of Palm Beach, created a beautiful home for the Matthew Mellons near Ocho Rios, where the owner kept his yacht, El Capitan. Their indoor- outdoor house was built with local materials and left open to the cooling breezes.

The elegant interiors combined Regency style antiques with comfortable upholstered pieces. Errol Flynn, who had played pirates and privateers in the movies, landed in Jamaica in 1942, when his boat was caught in a storm. He settled in Port Antonio eventually buying a historic hotel. Marylin Monroe and Arthur Miller made headlines by honeymooning at the Jamaica Inn Hotel in 1957. By then, eight international airlines connected Jamaica weekly to the outside world.

Round Hill was inaugurated in 1953 by the dashing John Pringle on 100 acres of a former sugar and pineapple plantation. Pringle’s grandfather was a Scottish doctor who had owned a 100,000 acre pineapple plantation on Jamaica.

Pringle’s was a new concept for a resort, consisting of 25 individually-owned cottages enjoying the full-services of an adjacent hotel and club. All the maintenance would be done by the company, allowing the owners/ investors to enjoy the use of their simple, two bedroom houses without having any of the responsibilities of home-ownership. During the many months that the owners were away, their cottages would be rented out—providing extra guest rooms for the hotel, while generating income for the owner.

Like other elite Caribbean hoteliers, Pringle ran Round Hill like his own private house party - always striving for the right mix of amusing guests to share a warm weather holiday.

His goal was to recreate the milieu of his grandfather’s house, where weekend visitors might include the honeymooning Duke and Duchess of Kent and a famous Irish jockey. Pringle was part of this world socially—connected to the British colonial past, while representing the excitement of the present. A former equerry to the Duke of Windsor’s in Nassau, Pringle had married a Ford fashion model who was a favorite

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of photographer Richard Avedon’s. Pringle’s mother owned the popular Sunset Lodge Hotel in Montego Bay (?) which functioned as a clubhouse for visiting swells like Henry Luce, Leland Hayward and Vincent Astor, as well as members of the business and arts community vacationing nearby.

Many of Jamaica’s historic Great Houses- mansions built by sugar plantation owners during the colonial era - are found near the Montego Bay resort area. Their sophisticated Caribbean Georgian architecture was underwritten by the fortunes made on the island by the plantations of men like the eighteenth century collector William Beckford - easily one of the richest men in England of his day. Pringle toured the area with his New York architect, William Ballard, focusing on the simpler shingle-roofed historic houses instead of the grand plantation-owner’s homes. Round Hill’s buildings were all Jamaican in style: white-painted, roofed with cedar shingles, provided with louvered windows and shaded verandahs required by the climate. By varying the siting of the identical cottages throughout the property, visual interest was created as these simple, small-scaled houses cascaded down the hillside towards the beach, blending into the landscape.

From the beginning visitors and home-owners were the most glamorous - Cole Porter played the piano during the opening party. Noel Coward was Round Hill’s first investor—and this consummate self-promoter, who was then reinventing himself with appearances in Las Vegas and on American television, understood exactly how to work the media. Adele Astaire (Fred’s sister and a New York socialite) was also an early investor. Together, they helped Pringle reach out to potential buyers during his initial sales trip to New York. Pringle’s mother insisted he also appeal to her London friends, fearing that Americans might fill Round Hill with “people of one class, one religion, one section of the country”. If that were to happen, she felt “it would be a great big bore, dreadfully confining like their bloody country clubs”. Think Auntie Mame at Upson Downs….

Round Hill opened in 1954, capable of welcoming 186 guests attended by a staff of 173. Honey-mooners included Jack and Jackie Kennedy and the Sarudin Aga Khan’s.

life magazine’s 1957 cover story on round hill included mrs John Pringle, a former ford model andJohn mcConnell enjoying the resort’s newest passtime, outdoor chess played at the beachfront.

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Among the high profile visitors were Grace Kelly, Princess Margaret, Paul Newman, Alfred Hitchcock, Clark Gable, Gloria Vanderbilt and Errol Flynn. Round Hill became the resort equivalent of Ciro’s in Hollywood—a place where Hollywood and Café society could let their hair down - while relying on a mention in the ever-important gossip columns.

Staying in a Round Hill cottage must have felt like being holed up in one of the bungalows at the Beverly Hills hotel.

An exclusive and relaxed, tropical paradise that anticipated the complete privacy of Mustique.

The mix included tycoons, some of the establishment, politicians, English aristos, film people—and always sexy young girls. . “Everybody you’ve heard of turns up at Round Hill, but the lovely thing is you can be by yourself” said Adele Astaire. A vintage image of Pringle—his arms spread wide open as he enthusiastically welcomes a returning guest— explains his success by making each of his resort visitors feel special. In 1954 Holiday magazine featured Round Hilll on the cover, commenting “The smallness of the cabins makes the wealthy feel refreshingly economical. This is a response to both the tax laws and the airplane by making the best of both - by buying a lovely and rather small house on a tropical fringe of the airplane’s orbit”. Later in life, Pringle dismissively referred to Round Hill as a Levittown for Millionaires.

One of the iconic images of warm weather resort style was Slim Aaron’s 195X image of New York socialite, Babe Paley, leaning on the veranda of her Round Hill cottage. Her simple yet supremely stylish outfit provides an idea of resort dressing as approached by one of the world’s best dressed women. Pringle remembers that as he was completing construction, the Paleys, who were staying with his mother, came to tour the site. CBS chairman Bill Paley was so impressed with everything he saw that, he insisted on buying a cottage, even though these were all sold out. Saying he would find a spot, Paley eventually blasted the top of a waterfront cliff, creating a rock shelf where Ballard built a whimsical cottage.

A single room under a Jamaican “parasol roof” overlooking a pool that spilled over the cliff edge into the sea. The cottage walls were lined with wood louvers, which - following a tropical routine - were thrown open in the mornings to enjoy the trade winds. At noon the pool shutters were closed and the rear façade was opened and at night both sides were opened and the air was filled with the smell of tuberoses and night-scented jasmine. The location of their cottage allowed the Paleys to live 26

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quietly—a sign often posted at their gate said Do Not Disturb, Babe’s home was an extension of her personal style—everything was restrained luxury, appropriate for the location. New York designers McMillen decorated the airy living space with informal bamboo furniture, covered in bright fabrics of tropical reds, yellows and pinks, contrasting with the white walls and tile floors. Simple pieces invited you to lounge and take a break from being fabulous all the time. Equally unpretentious were the pair of open air bedrooms—with no need for glass windows or mosquito screens in this idyllic climate.

Round Hill fashions were followed by the press, since the resort had developed a “reputation for setting the fashion pace in the Caribbean” with styles that worked their up to the US resorts. Round Hill’s devotees started the trend for madras in 1955, moving on to oriental silks or native printed cotton batik in 1957. Residents dressed informally in “the best

O P P O S I T E: Errol flynn was a regular visitor at round hill, he kept his yacht in Port Antonio, where he converted the historic titchfield hotel into the Jamaica reef hotel where he received hollywood friends like bette davis (top). At the round hill beach, mike Canfield and Senator John f. Kennedy who honeymooned here with Jackie at the vey private villa number 10 (bottom).

A B OV E: marilyn monroe and playwright Arthur miller enjoying dinner with friends during their 1957 honeymoon at the Jamaica inn hotel in ocho rios.

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cut play-clothes from all over the world”—they spent much of the day on the beach swimming, playing canasta or chess, fishing. The women changed for lunch, and dressed again for cocktails, dinner and dancing to a Calypso steel drum band., New York hairdresser Enrico Caruso was on hand to touchup the ladies..…Gentlemen got in on the resort dressing with colorful sports wear during the day; but opted for white dinner jackets and black tie in the evenings.

The Great Hall—the central administration building - was provided with a card room, travel service and a small shop. French chefs worked at the clubhouse and English [?] bartenders concocted signature tropical drinks like the Round Hill Special, the Pussyfoot and the Pepper Punch served with the Plantation Breakfast at the Clubhouse patio.

Political unrest in Jamaica in the 1970s during the government of Prime Minister Michael Manley had a negative impact on tourism with many foreigners decamping to Barbados or the safety of Palm Beach. A brilliant ad campaign, “Come Back to Jamaica”, succeeded in turning things around substantially. By 1984, Jamaican high-end tourism was thriving once again and Town & Country announced the “new excitement” at Port Antonio which included Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe’s, creator of the Marbella Club in Spain, stylish Jamaican outpost. His glamorous discotheque was especially popular with the elegant young people— European aristos, Tommy Tune and Twiggy—who were being spotted all over this more laid-back area of the island.

Eroll Flynn and the Baron von Thyssen had been smitten by the Port Antonio region since the 1940’s. That winter, Jamaica became so fashionable that gossip columns reported how both Saudi Prince Bandar and US industrialist Armand Hammer had been unable to rent one of the 50 villas at the exclusive Tryall Golf and Beach Club, the manicured, old school resort in the tradition of nearby Round Hill. “No amount of wealth could get you a villa” there, since these had been booked for more than a year. Even the legendary Aga Khan, who had owned a nearby house for years, had to make do that winter season with a villa at the slightly less fashionable Trident Villas. He began work planning a spectacular new house in the area to avoid future inconvenience.

babe Paley leans against the porch of her whimsical round hill cottage, while in the background bill Paley takes his own picture of photographer, Slim Aarons.

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