December 2015 | view this story as a .pdf

We know and love The Colony in Kennebunkport. But have you met her uptown little sister in Delray Beach, Florida?

By Colin W. Sargent

“My father bought this hotel with his father in 1935,” says Jestena Boughton of her landmark Colony Hotel & Cabana Club, a Mediterranean Revival palace built on the corner of stylish East Atlantic Avenue and U.S. Route One in Delray in 1926.

“He and my mother were newlyweds. After their wedding in Atlantic City, they drove down the Post Road to Key West and caught the ferry to Havana for their honeymoon. But there was shooting in the streets” in the tumult from Batista’s rise to power, so they headed back.

“Dad had noticed this hotel, but it wasn’t open.” On the return trip, they stopped again and just stared at it. Three stories high, capped by a pair of fanciful domes and dressed in red roof tiles, The Alterap, as it was first known, was a masterpiece in stucco with distinct European flair.

Designed by Addison Mizner associate Martin Luther Hampton, the creator of numerous National Historic Landmark properties (including this one), it was shuttered because its first owner had lost his shirt in the Depression. “My father, George Boughton, was just 22. He called his father,” Atlantic City hotelier Charles Boughton, “and said, ‘Why don’t we buy this?”

   Eighty years later, the Boughtons still own it. Not only is the Colony on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s the centerpiece of the downtown revitalization of Delray as this year-round resort finds itself awash in delicious restaurants, music venues, and trendy destination shopping. “Here we are, the only historic hotel still standing on Atlantic Avenue,” Jestena says.

As you enter from the avenue, you cross a terrace with Cuban terrazzo tiles shaded by yellow and maroon awnings on wrought-iron spears that match the original Spanish-revival lighting. Tables and wicker chairs offer views of the graceful theater of the street amid the comings and goings at this dreamy address.

The way The Colony engages with the street is a miracle of welcoming. You’ll want to stay here forever, reading the Miami Herald and sipping Cuban coffee (espresso cooked with sugar) by day, or perhaps enjoying cognac after twilight as night cools the city. There’s a tincture of sophistication here that flirts with time. One guest flips through The Atlantic while her friend races through a novel–Lawrence Durrell.

But then you’d miss the lobby. To the right as you enter is a period-perfect bar, a new addition that looks as though it were always here. “But it couldn’t have been here,” Jestena’s cousin Hilary Roche, the managing director, says. “The hotel was built during Prohibition.”

The Ficks Reed rattan lobby furniture from 1926 is extant and perfectly reconditioned, layers of white paint removed to reveal the original glow and texture of the bamboo. How could it be that the hotel still has the original baby grand piano in its music room, the original brass and wrought-iron elevator from 1926 (with palazzo shards of glass on the walls, the cat’s meow), and the lovely, solemn 1920s oak furniture in its 70 rooms? How could the 1926 telephone switchboard and oak writing desks filled with color postcards of the Colony still be here, deftly complemented by incredible 2016 touches?

The answer is Jestena, a landscape architect by training. She earned her master’s from the University of Pennsylvania before taking a job with “the city of Seattle for five years,” according to a fine story in the Delray Coastal Star by Mary Thurwachter. “Later, she taught landscape architecture and urban design at the University of Massachusetts.”

Jestena has let slip that she’s a modernist, but the Mediterranean allure of the hotel keeps pulling her in. “My dad died in 1986. When my mother died in 1994, I came here as general manager.” But this city, a paradise between Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach, hadn’t taken off the way it has now. “I thought of it as Dull-Ray,” she laughs. “The interior walls here were pale beige.”

Now they pop in lime, persimmon, and turquoise, with fabrics decorators would give their eye-teeth for. How does she do it?

“That’s my favorite part of the business,” she says. “Procurement,” finding the unfindable. “Procurement is even on my email address.” Not to mention understanding her guests with astonishing canniness.

    Today, both the Delray and Kennebunkport Colonies are famous for their repeat visitors. “In 1994 in Delray, we didn’t have that,” Jestena says. “What we had was a handful of little old ladies. A few years later, the Photographic Workshop was built in Delray, so we were able to add middle-aged men who wanted to take a photography course. We used to have wall-to-wall carpeting upstairs, but I knew we had luscious, original Dade County pine floors under there. When the carpets left, the old ladies left.” She waits a beat. “These floors are harder. I guess they felt if they fell, they’d fall on a nice white carpet.”

The founding sense of the hotel was “for train travelers, who came here with their big trunks,” she says. “The season was from January 10 until April 10. Do you know why? They had to get home and do their taxes by April 15. And they weren’t going to miss Christmas and New Year’s in New England!”

For fledgling travelers in the motoring set, there were, and still are, 18 double-door garages in one of the hotel wings where the cars could be parked, from Model-T to Pierce-Arrow, with the chauffeurs staying in rooms directly above. Think Sabrina.

While the Colony proper is five blocks from the beach to be in the center of all the action, a shuttle relays guests to the Cabana, Club, with its stunning, private sweep of Delray Beach and 80-degree turquoise water. “Dad bought the Cabana land in 1951,” Jestena says. “We had a woodie” to shuttle guests to this oasis. There are umbrella tables, shaded beach lounge chairs, and above the dunes, a new edgeless pool designed by Jestena with opalescent glass tiles designed by Jestena that light up for incredible magic at night.

How often is it true that there’s enchantment on both sides of a looking glass? The difference here is, The Colony in Kennebunkport (sample guest across the centuries, Gregory Peck) is a complete destination in itself, taking guests into its embrace and answering their every need. The more Bohemian Colony Delray (sample guest Leonard Nimoy) connects you to urban discoveries. Hey, just because they’re sisters doesn’t mean they have to be the same, does it?

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