James Deering
1859 - 1925
Person TypePerson
English Statesman and Author, 30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965
French, February 25, 1841 – December 3, 1919
American, b. 1848 - d. 1933
BiographyBy the turn of the century, Deering owned homes on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, in the countryside near Evanston, Illinois, in New York City, and in Paris. His name appeared in social columns as an arts connoisseur, socialite, international traveler, and cultural ambassador. He hosted events for French dignitaries at his New York and Chicago residences. In 1906, for Deering's work in promoting agricultural technology development in France, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur. In 1910, he purchased land for a complex of buildings and gardens in Coconut Grove, south of Miami and north of his brother's estate. He and Paul Chalfin then travelled through Europe purchasing furnishings and architectural elements to be incorporated into Deering's new home, which he named "Vizcaya", the name of a Spanish province rendered in English as "Biscay". James Deering built Villa Vizcaya between 1914 and 1922 with visionary mastermind of the project, designer Paul Chalfin, his collaborator companion. The architect was F. Burrall Hoffman Jr. The estate's landscape master plan and formal gardens were designed by Colombian landscape designer Diego Suarez. Paul Chalfin had attended Harvard, trained as a painter at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and was an associate of renowned decorator Elsie de Wolfe. She introduced Chalfin to Deering for the interiors of his Chicago home in 1910. In 1910, Chalfin and Deering traveled through Europe together for the first trip of many over the years, in part to collect ideas and begin acquiring art, antiquities, and furnishings for the new Florida estate. The culmination of their shared effort and lasting memorial to their creative relationship is Villa Vizcaya, the Miami estate created between 1914 and 1923. The Villa Vizcaya is distinguished for its Italian Renaissance-inspired Mediterranean Revival architecture, its huge Italian Renaissance revival gardens, and sumptuously designed, detailed, and executed interior architectural elements with European, Asian, and American furnishings, and art and antiquities that span two millennia. The numerous sculptures in the gardens and villa are of ancient Greek, Greco-Roman, and Italian Renaissance origins and styles. For example, one element is altar-like in white marble, featuring the carved heads of goats, cattle, and lions, and flanked by coral stone pillars with carving of the 'Oak Tree of Gernika', symbolizing the freedom of the Basque Vizcaya in Spain.
