NOTORIOUS NEW YORKERS
The Singer Owing Machine
Soigné Paris Singer was instrumental in the development of Palm Beach a century ago and enjoys a rehabilitated reputation today. But as Ambrose McGaffney discovered, the sewingmachine heir dropped more than a few stitches along the way
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ARNOLD GENTHE/ALAMY
“H
e was the finest-looking man I ever saw; six feet, three or four, straight as a die, with a fine figure. At this time, he was 50 and looked 40.” That’s Addison Mizner, the legendary Palm Beach architect, on another of the island’s founding figures, Paris Eugene Singer—whose legacy can be felt in the elegant Everglades Club, which he began building in 1918, and on Singer Island, which is named for him. His life was every bit as colorful as the South Florida community that still celebrates him today. Singer was the 22nd of 24 children born to Isaac Singer, the sewing machine tycoon. Perhaps after so many children, papa simply ran out of ideas for what to call them—Paris was named after the French city of his birth in 1867. (When his father died eight years later, he divided his $13 million fortune among the 20 surviving heirs—with one particularly unfavored son, who taken his mother’s side during a nasty divorce, getting just $500.) Paris Singer’s connection to Palm Beach began during a visit when he was 33. By that stage he had already known tragedy: a son he had out of wedlock with the famous dancer Isadora Duncan drowned in 1913 in the Seine at the age of three. (Duncan’s two other children also died young; she herself perished in 1927 when the long silk scarf she was wearing in an open car became entangled in the wheel and broke her neck.)
AVENUE MAGAZINE | MARCH—APRIL 2022
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