History

The man who named Hollywood built this.

1925, Joseph W. Young, and the landmark designation

Joseph W. Young's mansion shortly after it was completed in 1925, placeholder image

1882 to 1934

Joseph Wesley Young Jr

Young bought land between the Everglades and the Atlantic and drew a city on it. He named it Hollywood. He developed Port Everglades, which still moves freight and cruise passengers today, and he served as the city's first mayor.

He was a developer in the decade when Florida was being invented, and what he left is not only a house. It is a street plan, a working port and a city of a hundred and fifty thousand people.

The house on Hollywood Boulevard was the one he built for himself, and it is where he died.

The record

The house, by date

1882
Joseph Wesley Young Jr is born.
The 1920s
Young buys land between the Everglades and the Atlantic, lays out a city and names it Hollywood. He develops Port Everglades and serves as the city's first mayor.
1925
The house is completed on Hollywood Boulevard as Young's personal residence. Rubush and Hunter of Indianapolis draw it, helped by Young's friend Addison Mizner.
1920s and 1930s
The house holds gathering after gathering. Two of Young's sons are married in it.
1934
Young dies in the study of this house, at fifty two. The city he founded is nine years old.
10 August 1989
The house is added to the National Register of Historic Places. It is also listed on the Florida State Heritage Register.
This century
The house is restored in the early twenty first century and remains privately owned, which is why it opens by booking rather than by opening hours.

The founder

The archival photographs are shown as they survive, with their grain and their damage. A hundred year old photograph cleaned up to look like a new one stops being evidence.

The mansion under construction in 1925 — Joseph Wesley Young Jr, founder of the City of Hollywood

He was fifty two when he died, in the study of this house. The city he founded was nine years old.

The architecture

Spanish Moorish, 1925

Rubush and Hunter of Indianapolis drew the house. Addison Mizner, the architect who gave Palm Beach its look and a personal friend of Young, helped with it.

Spanish Moorish, sometimes called Mediterranean Revival: arched openings, a tiled courtyard, stucco walls, barrel tile, wrought iron, a ballroom for entertaining and twenty three rooms in all.

The study

The study is a small room, and it is the one place in the house where the history is not decorative.

Hollywood Boulevard in the late 1920s — The study, where Joseph W. Young died in 1934

For the record

The house on paper

Built	1925
Built for	Joseph W. Young, founder of the City of Hollywood
Architects	Rubush and Hunter of Indianapolis, with Addison Mizner
Style	Spanish Moorish, also called Mediterranean Revival