Memory Lane: Jack Mitchell's Coral Beach Club was the center of fun in Palm Beach - Palm Beach Daily News
During his mid-20th-century Palm Beach heyday, sartorially exuberant Jack Mitchell wasn't hard to spot.
Known for his colorful ensembles, he might be spotted wearing a sunny-yellow blazer and violet-hued tie — perhaps while behind the wheel of his Cadillac convertible.
As such an outgoing fashion sense might suggest, Mitchell wanted everyone to have a good time during an era remembered on the island as laidback and carefree.
And they were indeed promised a good time at the Coral Beach Club that Mitchell built and fostered until the late 1960s.
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"It was our meeting place," the late Palm Beach resident Brownie McLean once said of Mitchell's club. "And Jack made everyone, when everyone was there, feel we were all exceptions to the rules."
When Mitchell's North End club opened in 1947, just south of the Palm Beach Country Club, he had already made a name for himself as a maestro of well-executed fun.
He'd managed other island clubs after coming to Palm Beach in the 1920s following military service in World War I.
Most notably they included the Sun & Surf Club — a condominium complex now stands there at Sunrise Avenue and North Ocean Boulevard — where he instituted an idiosyncratic mix of activities that included bridge games and water carnivals.
During World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy as a submarine commander. He returned to Palm Beach after the war and began developing an oceanfront parcel he had purchased before the war.
Construction on what would become the Coral Beach Club began in 1946.
The U-shaped facility was designed by the late Palm Beach architect John Volk, whose numerous other residential and commercial projects on the island included The Royal Poinciana Plaza.
The club was designed in a "Brazilian style" with a tropical "decorative scheme." An enormous beachfront swimming pool was flanked by 30 cabanas on the north and south sides.
Once the Coral Beach Club debuted in 1947, it diverged from seasonal clubs in town: Open 11 months a year with activities geared for all ages, it helped provide during the off-season summers "the life of the community" under "genial host" Mitchell, the Miami News noted.
Holiday activities, weekly buffets, board-game nights and weekend dinner dances were part of the fun at the club, along with beachside volleyball and swimming races. Bridge, canasta and backgammon tournaments welcomed players young and old.
There was no telling the getups one might see during one of Mitchell's memorable costume parties with themes that included country-western and "dress as your favorite cartoon character."
After Mitchell sold the club property in the late 1960s, the facility was razed to make way for new construction that would become The Beach Club.
In January 1970, 500-plus people turned out for the opening of the new Beach Club, which also originally was designed by Volk.
Marjorie Merriweather Post, who snipped a ceremonial ribbon to mark the occasion, was among the dignitaries and socialites attending.
Mitchell, who died in 1972 at his Palm Beach home on North Ocean Boulevard, was made an honorary member of the new club.
Memory Lane: Jack Mitchell's Coral Beach Club was the center of fun in Palm Beach - Palm Beach Daily News
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