BARBARIANS at the GLADES

Palm Beach, long a sleepy bastion for the leisurely elite, is straining under the weight of an influx of MAGAS with money, COVID exiles, and Gen X newbies. And don't even get them started on West Palm

- Daisy Prince

THE ENTRANCE TO the Everglades Club, on fashionable Worth Avenue, is almost hidden from view. The mirrored façade, behind carved wrought iron, deflects the intrusive glances of passersby. Its heavy, imposing door rebuffs the curious or unworthy. A strong push and the right pedigree are required to gain admittance, as you might expect from a club that considers itself one of the landmarks of Palm Beach.

Inside its dark foyer, a gray-haired attendant scans a list of the chosen for your name. When it appears, she lifts her palm to guide you up narrow steps to a hushed white courtyard, framed by blue-and-white-tiled arcades and softly lit by rows of white rice paper lanterns. Palm trees and pink bougainvillea provide a pop of color. Here and there are the entrances to secret apartments, secured by latches. On a second story are latticed windows, echoing those in Spain’s Alhambra Palace, where cloistered Spanish ladies peered out from their private world. The space feels, as its architect, Addison Mizner, intended, like “something religious—a nunnery, with a chapel.”

Off the courtyard is a salon. Nearby, at a mahogany bar, a bartender in a white jacket with gold buttons serves patrons—all white, mostly male, mostly golden-aged, bedecked in blue blazers and green ties sporting the club’s signature red alligator. These are the present-day descendants of the Gilded Age elite, with names like Vanderbilt, Phipps, Dodge, Pillsbury, Pulitzer, Sanford, Hutton, and Post—the families that put Palm Beach on the map.