Casa Casuarina, Private mansion in South Beach, Miami Beach, US
Casa Casuarina is a two-storey Mediterranean Revival mansion at 1116 Ocean Drive in South Beach, Miami Beach. Its pale cream stucco facade has a round-arched stone entrance portal with carved columns, a small balcony above, and a red-tiled hipped roof with a white chimney-like tower.
Alden Freeman, heir to the Standard Oil fortune, commissioned architect Ronin Wolf in 1930 to build his private residence. Over the following decades the building changed hands several times and was eventually converted into a hotel.
The estate takes its name from the Australian casuarina tree and displays courtyards with colonnades and handcrafted ceramic work. The rooms combine Spanish colonial elements with Venetian mosaic patterns that decorate walls and floors.
The estate now operates as a boutique hotel with ten suites in different categories. Visitors can explore the restaurant that serves Italian Mediterranean cuisine in the richly decorated historic rooms.
A block from the Alcázar de Colón in Santo Domingo is set into the right side of the main entrance, a detail most visitors walk past. Freeman modeled the house on that building, and Addison Mizner designed the interiors with key lime coral flooring.
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