Rush to the Gold Coast

New money buys the full life in Florida's boonies

All the charms of the Riviera, Biarritz, Menton, Nice, Sorrento, the Lido and Egypt are to be found in Boca Raton. International society demands Boca Raton, the premier of cosmopolitan resorts. The silvery sea . . . lazy lagoons. . . endless canals winding through a labyrinth of loveliness . . . unite to make living here almost beyond realness in its ideality.

—From 1926 newspaper ads

No matter that the Floridian demi-Eden never got semibuilt. Today, nearly 60 years after the Florida land bubble burst, Boca Raton and its environs really are almost beyond realness. The international rich have rediscovered the Gold Coast's Palm Beach County. Though it includes the town of Palm Beach, this incubator for the newly wealthy is snob years distant from that small, code-ridden oasis of blue blood and encrusted money. The Gold Coast nouveaux, for the most part lustier, sportier and much younger than the ancien régime of Worth Avenue, converge from all over the world to flaunt their millions. As Ralph Destino, president of Cartier, puts it, "They've carved out a new and unique style. There's nothing anywhere that parallels the mix of things here."

The mix flourishes in part because much of the area is relatively virgin territory for the rich. "It's no longer pleasant to go to the South of France," sniffs one visitor. "It's so inundated, the pleasure is gone. Life in Southern California revolves around private homes and backyard swimming pools. They've overcasualized; there's almost an absence of tone." Says Helen Boehm, president of the porcelain company that bears her name: "I've been all over the world, and this place has glamour, color and manicure." Boehm (rhymes with dream) saw her very own polo players, the Boehm-Palm Beach Team, win the $100,000 world cup title in April for the second straight year.

The Gold Coast does not have smog, or terrorists, or a socialist government. Real estate prices are not out of sight. So, as Maggy Scherer, a third-generation Californian, who with her husband Allan a few years ago sold their Beverly Hills home to move their 36 ponies to a rustic compound called La Chacra (latino Spanish for Little Farm), points out: "People are leaving France. They're leaving Italy. This is the place." Some concede that cosmopolitanism can go too far. When the band struck up the Star-Spangled Banner before a recent match, one woman demanded loudly: "Whose national anthem is that?"

There is little night life in Palm Beach County, and no evidence of a drug culture. "They're not into debauchery," says one observer. "They're not here to lie in the sun and get high." On the contrary, they are irrepressibly energetic outdoor people who play tennis at 10, golf at 2 and racquetball at 5. Their favorite sport is polo. Center of the action is the four-year-old Palm Beach Polo and Country Club. The P.B.P.C.C. has eleven polo fields (each ten times the size of a football field) surrounded by condominiums, villas and single-family homes. There is also a complex in Boca Raton called the Royal Palm Polo-Sports Club, with seven fields, and the 800-acre Gulfstream Polo at Lake Worth with five more.