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Mar-a-Lago: An inside look at Trump's home in Palm Beach


Though former President Donald J. Trump's time in office ended, his estate looms large on Palm Beach.

Photos taken by Palm Beach Post photographers through the nearly 100 years of its existence offer a peek inside the walls of Mar-a-Lago, along with a taste of its past.

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The history of Mar-a-Lago

It began with a cereal heiress

Marjorie Merriweather Post was Mrs. Edward F. Hutton when she commissioned Marion Sims Wyeth to build her a 58-bedroom Spanish-Moorish-Portuguese-Venetian palace on 17 acres of jungle between the ocean and the Intracoastal.

Its location is noted in the name: “Mar-a-Lago" is translated from Spanish for “sea to lake,” but it's also a take on the lady of the house’s first name, as the Palm Beach Daily News wrote in 2017.

The estate was finished in 1927. Ornamentation is visible from the outer part of the building. These photos, taken in 1994, show the courtyard.

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Former President Donald Trump's 'Winter White House'

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President Trump, Melania Trump's holidays in Palm Beach at Mar-a-Lago
Video: A look back at former President Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump's holiday visits to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.
Laura Lordi, Palm Beach Post

In 1985, Donald Trump paid $10 million for Mar-a-Lago. It contained 33 bathrooms, three bomb shelters and a nine-hole golf course.

“I thought I was buying a museum,” Trump told Palm Beach Life in 1986, according to the Daily News.

“I never thought it was going to be a particularly comfortable place, but I thought it was so incredible as a statement that it would be wonderful to own. The fact is, it has turned out not only to be a museum but a very comfortable home.”

A decade later, he converted it to a private club with a spa, tennis and croquet courts, a new ballroom and beach club.

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Information from stories and archives through the years by The Palm Beach Post and Palm Beach Daily News were used in this report.