A Hundred-Year-Old Hotel Reimagined into a Modern Design that Honours its History

This week’s instalment of the Project of the Week series features a renovated soft and subtle hotel design by 2021 SBID Awards Finalist, Elkus Manfredi Architects.

The design of the intimately scaled, 32-key White Elephant Palm Beach is a contemporary interpretation of Mediterranean revival architecture that lovingly honours its history while introducing a new design voice to Palm Beach. Airy, casually elegant, and gracious with a touch of wit, White Elephant Palm Beach debuts a fresh aesthetic for Palm Beach that is deeply attuned to today’s global guest.

White Elephant Palm Beach opened in 2020 in the former Bradley Park Hotel, built in 1924 and designated a historic landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission of Palm Beach in 1980. Now owned by New England Development, the hotel underwent a “down to the bones” reimagining by Elkus Manfredi Architects, which was responsible for the comprehensive design vision, including exterior and interior architecture, furnishings, landscape, and art curation. Sister hotel to Nantucket’s legendary White Elephant, White Elephant Palm Beach reflects the same meticulous standard of service while capturing the essence of contemporary Palm Beach.

The hotel’s collection of museum-quality original art, specifically curated for this project, is found in public spaces, guestrooms, and even bathrooms, adding another dimension of authenticity to the personal, layered experience that White Elephant Palm Beach offers its guests.

What was the client’s brief? 

New England Development asked Elkus Manfredi to create a new perspective for the emerging wave of international travelers to Palm Beach, a design that would embrace the unique history of Palm Beach and the architectural significance of the Bradley Park Hotel, while introducing a new aesthetic – soft, subtle, intimate – that is a departure from the grand, strong, colorful aesthetic generally associated with Palm Beach. The hotel also needed to embody the service promise of its sister, White Elephant Nantucket.

What inspired the design of the project?

In a gesture that captures the playfulness of the brand, the client named their first White Elephant hotel, located in Nantucket, in response to an islander’s initial fears (later assuaged) about the prospect of a new hotel on his island. The inspiration for the design of that hotel’s sister was the result of that brand mixed with other elements, which all together produced the very singular and serendipitous alchemy that is the White Elephant Palm Beach. Major inspirations included:

• The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restore and modernize the Bradley Hotel’s classic Addison Mizner-influenced Mediterranean Revival architecture was a foundational inspiration.
• We wanted to embrace the DNA of the brand by bringing a fresh new design perspective to Palm Beach. So instead of leaning into the typical patterned, strong Palm Beach aesthetic, we developed a very textural, neutral palette to create a soft-spoken, elegant, more contemporary aesthetic that gently embraces the guest.
• The idea of continuously surprising and delighting guests is another central inspiration. Designers layered subtle, unexpected design surprises for the guest at every turn in the hotel.
• The collection of original art specifically curated for the hotel – and found everywhere, including corridors and bathrooms – was another high-impact and inspiring layer of the design.

What was the toughest hurdle your team overcame during the project?

• Restoration and redesign of the building needed to be accomplished while satisfying the historic criteria of both the Landmarks Preservation Commission of Palm Beach and the National Park Service.
• Working in a hundred-year-old landmarked property required creative, flexible design schemes that could accommodate the surprises that inevitably come with opening up century-old walls.
• The original center axis of the hotel’s design was a focus of the historic preservation agencies responsible for reviewing the plans in light of the building’s designation as a historic landmark. While designers moved the main entry off-center to allow the full activation of the courtyard with a pool, lounging area, and an indoor/outdoor restaurant, they maintained elements of the original axis and incorporated them into the new design in homage to the history of the building.

What was your team’s highlight of the project?

The reaction and recognition from guests.  As an example, one guest wrote: “Amazing stay all the way. Great rooms, fantastic amenities and super friendly staff. Well done White Elephant Palm Beach, our new home away from home. We will come back and surely enough we will recommend this hotel to all our friends and family.”

Why did you enter this project into the SBID Awards?

From the start, the client tasked us with designing for a new wave of travelers to Palm Beach – to bring new perspectives and clientele to the resort destination. So rather than being driven by the classic Palm Beach aesthetic, the design introduces a global point of view to this American resort that we believed would resonate with SBID’s international audience.

Questions answered by Elizabeth Lowrey, Principal and Director of Interior Architecture, Elkus Manfredi Architects.