Hiring a pop star to entertain at a private bash has long been a glittery option exercised by the rich, but Palm Beach’s most famous Gilded Age resident embraced a different approach to delight his family, friends and captains-of-industry peers with melody at his island manse.
After all, Standard Oil partner, Florida developer and railroad tycoon Henry Flagler was a music-loving man who coveted the fact that his marble-pillared Palm Beach mansion — a 1902 wedding gift to his third wife, Mary Lily — included an artwork-adorned music room.
That spacious room showcased, among other things, a floor-to-ceiling instrument: a custom 1902 model pipe organ by J.H. & C.S. Odell & Co. Number of pipes? 1,249…