Addison Mizner's Mediterranean Revival vocabulary — terracotta roof tiles, stucco walls, arched loggias, and Venetian-inflected ornament — found its most enduring expression not in Palm Beach but on a Georgia barrier island, where The Cloister at Sea Island was completed in 1928. The resort was conceived by Howard Coffin and designed by Mizner in the idiom he had perfected along Florida's Gold Coast, and its white-rendered facades rising above the dunes retain that original romantic character even after a comprehensive reconstruction completed in 2006 that expanded the property to 85 oceanfront rooms and suites while preserving the architectural language intact. The interiors carry the warmth of a particularly well-furnished Southern plantation house translated into Spanish colonial terms. Exposed dark-stained timber ceiling beams, painted a faded celadon between the joists, run through the guest rooms, grounding carved mahogany headboards with scroll-top detailing, layered Persian rugs over wide-plank hardwood floors, and gilded baroque mirrors that sit comfortably alongside coral-upholstered armchairs. The dining room pushes the material register further — an elaborately coffered cypress ceiling with worm-eaten patina, iron-and-linen chandeliers, arched leaded windows, and leather-seated chairs with turned stretchers establish a dining atmosphere that owes more to an Andalusian cortijo than a conventional hotel restaurant. From the air, the freeform pool terrace, lined with sabal palms and white-canopied sun loungers, curves toward a wide tidal beach where, characteristically, guests still arrive on horseback.

1hr drive from Jacksonville airport (JAX); 1hr 15min drive from Savannah airport (SAV); 20min drive from Brunswick airport (BQK)

No description provided yet.