The Baby House suite was designed with a fairy-tale theme for Post’s daughter, actress Dina Merrill, as a child, with pink roses on twisting vines climbing up the beehive fireplace screen and door handles shaped like squirrels. Once Mar-a-Lago was built and decorated, Post would change little over the decades to come, except for adding a dance pavilion to host square dance parties.
After decades of hosting parties and dignitaries at Mar-a-Lago, Post died in 1973, but not before developing a vision for the estate to become a “Winter White House” and willing it to the federal government for presidential retreats and hosting international dignitaries. The year before Post’s death, the estate was also declared a National Historic Landmark.
