Bertha Palmer

What an Extraordinary Woman

Photo credits: Sarasota County History Center

Anders L. Zorn Painting of Bertha Palmer

The Oaks after Thomas Reed Martin Remodeling

Rear View of the Oaks

Bertha Palmer's Formal Gardens

Bertha Palmer's Gardens Along the Bay

Bertha Palmer (right) with Family and Friends

In 1910, Bertha Honoré Palmer heralded the migration to the southernmost state and led the flock in the purchase and development of land in the Sarasota/Tampa Bay area. During a period of eight years, Mrs. Potter Palmer as she was known, along with her father, her sons, and her brother, masterminded the transformation of a frontier fishing village into a winter haven for the wealthy and a lucrative wellspring of employment for others. The Palmer legacy endures in the local archives of history and folklore.

Roadways are named after members of the family: Palmer Boulevard, Palmer Crossing Drive, Palmer Glen Circle, Honoré Avenue, Lockwood Ridge Road, Potter Place and D'Orsay Street*. The existent sprawling residential developments of Palmer Ranch and The Oaks as well as the remnants of Meadowsweet Pastures (the cattle ranch) in Myakka River State Park were among the Palmer properties**.

Her arrival marked a turning point for the region. When other potential investors learned that Mrs. Potter Palmer considered land development in Sarasota a worthy
enterprise, they chose to follow her lead. She had become an international celebrity and an exemplar of high society and astute business acumen. Bertha Honoré Palmer's elegance, her affluence, her intellect, her haute couture, and her joie de vivre made her the unsurpassed queen of Chicago society during the Gilded Age.

She set the vogue by her choice of gowns, coiffeur, jewelry, the grandeur of her homes, and the names on her social calendar. She had traveled the world and mingled with the King and Queen of England, the Queen of Belgium, the King of Greece, and political and societal luminaries throughout Europe and the United States.

She enjoyed ocean travel and booked passage on the newest, fastest, and most luxurious liners. She made certain she would be a passenger on the Lusitania for the maiden voyage on September 7, 1907.

Her passion for jewels never abated and whenever the Palmers traveled to Europe, her husband Potter made his requisite visit to Tiffanys to select the most precious stones and the richest gold in their collection. She loved flaunting them. In 1904, as she was crossing the Atlantic on the steamship Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, she deliberately made her grand entrance into the salon after the other passengers were seated, and a singer from the Metropolitan Opera was beginning his song. Author Aline B. Saarinen, related: "So fabulous were her jewels that a newspaper declared that when she appeared on the S.S. Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with a tiara of diamonds as large as lima beans, a corsage panned with diamonds, a sunburst as big as a baseball, a stomacher of diamonds and all her pearls around her neck, Alois Burgskeller of the Metropolitan Opera, who was singing at the ship's concert, was stopped right in the middle of a high note."

On one trip abroad, in 1902, the Collector of Customs in Chicago listed the following articles declared by Mrs. Potter Palmer:
One fur coat, sable
One astrakhan coat
Thirteen wool and crepe gowns
One silk gown
One black chiffon dress
Twelve summer gowns, silk and cotton
One string of pearls
Two pair earrings, pearl
One sapphire pin
One ring consisting of two pearls and one diamond
One catseye brooch
Two diamond mounted lorgnettes
Two pearl bracelets
One pearl pendant
Two tailor suits, cloth
Two cloth cloaks, five hats

Those articles were shipped ahead so she might have a respectable selection for the first round of social galas. Her wardrobe would be supplemented many times over during her stay. She was well known on the Place Vendôme, the fashion center of Paris. She frequented the most splendid and expensive houses of the couturiers. Palmer's biographer, Ishbel Ross noted: "She made her selections swiftly, perhaps a velvet mantle with a gray sheen and chinchilla collar, a lacy gown, a gossamer tulle sparkling with arabesques of diamanté. She loved everything to sparkle and glitter." Newspapers and magazines in London and Paris, Clair de Pratz, writing in LaFronde on May 10, 1900, found her a combination of French elegance and much allure.

Following the death of her husband in 1902, she purchased a home in London and would spend two hundred thousand dollars entertaining (comparable to four million dollars today) during a social season. She reveled in the splendor and adulation of her wardrobe, her homes, and her elegant soirees.

As Bertha Palmer reached the beginning of her sixth decade in 1910, there was a marked transformation in her desires and priorities. There was no lull in her
pursuit of profitable enterprise. She retained that fire within her. But the Mrs. Potter Palmer of royal castles and silks and diamonds compromised her elegant life style for something different. She evolved into a woman who was not above walking through the wet muck of the Florida hinterland and acknowledging among her friends the cowboys and farm hands she employed. She chose family, not social acquaintances, to fill her life. The joy of growing flowers meant more than wearing diamonds. The grande dame of Chicago, the pacesetter of London, Paris, and Newport had not disappeared, yet she had slipped into the shadows. In this new setting she became a woman wearing simple dresses, entertaining her family at picnics and cherishing every moment with her grandchildren. She took great pride in the successes of her ranch, croplands, and gardens and took an active role in the conception, implementation, and administration of the properties.

The totality of Bertha Palmer's life prior to 1910 when she traveled to Sarasota served as a necessary prelude to her accomplishments and the vicissitudes of her life there. Just as her arrival revolutionized Sarasota, it also marked a sea change in her own life.

Special thanks to Hope Black for her permitting us to use excerpts from her thesis, "Mounted on a Pedestal: Bertha Honore Palmer".

* Lockwood and Adrian Honoré were Bertha Palmer's brothers; D'Orsay was her mother's family name and the middle name of her grandson, Potter D'Orsay Palmer III.

**She named her elegant estate on Sarasota Bay, The Oaks, and Meadowsweet Pastures was the cattle ranch in what is now Myakka River State Park.

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