The Flagler Museum opens a new exhibition on Nov. 10 that traces Palm Beach itself back to a single event in Chicago. America Takes the Stage: From the White City to Whitehall runs through May 30, 2027, at Whitehall, One Whitehall Way, and it comes with a series of three evening lectures that starts Nov. 18.

The fair that shaped the island

The show is about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, known as the White City. It was designed by architect Daniel H. Burnham and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and 27 million people visited it.

A decade later, Henry Flagler was building Palm Beach into a winter resort for northern travelers, using his railroad and his grand hotels. In 1902 he built Whitehall, his own house in Palm Beach, in the architectural style of the fair. The museum describes Whitehall as the only permanent monument to that moment in American cultural history, and the exhibition sets out to show the line running from one to the other.

The guest curator is Mosette Broderick, an author, historian and professor of architecture at New York University. The exhibition is sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Henry.

Three lectures, starting with a PBS host

Each lecture opens with cocktails at 5:30 p.m. and starts at 6 p.m.

  • Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026: Geoffrey Baer, the PBS television host and Chicago historian, on the legacy of the 1893 fair, from the City Beautiful movement to the first Ferris Wheel and the products introduced there.
  • Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2026: Gerald Larson, professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Cincinnati and author of The Skyscraper and the White City, on the fair John Wellborn Root planned and never got to build.
  • Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2027: Alice Rawsthorn, the London-based design critic and author of Design as an Attitude and Hello World, on designing the American dream then and now.

Lecture tickets are sold through the museum's ticketing site. Members whose level includes free lectures receive the discount at checkout.

Visiting Whitehall

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. It is closed Mondays, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Docent tours run Tuesday through Saturday at 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m., and Sunday at 12:30 and 2 p.m.

Admission is $28 for adults 13 and older, $14 for children 6 to 12, and free for children 5 and under and for members. Visitors under 18 must be with an adult. The museum's café begins its Gilded Age-style tea service the day after Thanksgiving and serves it through Easter Sunday.

How to go

America Takes the Stage: From the White City to Whitehall is on view Nov. 10, 2026, through May 30, 2027, at the Flagler Museum, One Whitehall Way, Palm Beach, FL 33480. Admission tickets and lecture tickets are sold on the museum's website. Call (561) 655-2833 for information.

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