Mar-a-Lago

Mar-a-Lago is a resort and National Historic Landmark in Palm Beach, Florida, owned since 1985 by Donald Trump. Mar-a-Lago was built for businesswoman and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post between the years 1924 and 1927 during the 1920s Florida land boom.

 

• Donald Trump bought it for less than $10 million back in the 1980s. The property has 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms.
• It was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post, an heiress to the Postum Cereal Company. It cost about $7 million to build in the 1920s, which would be more than $100 million today.

Post willed her home to the American government upon her death with the intention that it be used as a warm-weather retreat for the president. But in 1981 the government returned Mar-a-Lago, which had been declared a National Historic Landmark a year earlier, to the Post Foundation, citing its high annual maintenance cost of $1 million.

Mrs. Post was married 4 times. One of her husbands was Mr. Davies who served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Mrs. Post had 2,000 pints of pasteurized cream—frozen by the Birdseye process—and 25 refrigerators shipped ahead to the American Embassy, in Moscow.