NEW YORK, Feb. 16 -- Real estate mogul Donald Trump will sell off part of the antiques collection that came with the purchase of his Palm Beach, Fla., residence, Mar-A-Lago, which he plans to open as a private club this spring, it was announced Thursday by Christie's auction house. Christopher Burge, chairman of Christie's America, said Trump would sell only about 4 percent of the total furnishings in the 118-room house and would probably realize a profit of up to $1.32 million. He said Trump would use the money for 'the continued preservation of one of the most important houses in the United States.' Mar-A-Lago, a designated National Historic Landmark, was built in 1927 by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her then-husband, Wall Streeter Edward F. Hutton. Architect and Broadway designer Joseph Urban designed the Hispano-Moorish style home which is surrounded by a private golf course and elaborate gardens and is connected by tunnel to an Atlantic Ocean beach. Post furnished her limestone mansion with an eclectic mix of Spanish Renaissance, Louis XVI, English Adam, and Venetian Baroque furniture and decorations, 239 lots of which will go on the block at Christie's March 30, according to Burge. There will be a pre-auction viewing at Trump Tower and Trump's Plaza Hotel beginning March 11. 'Mrs. Post was a woman of indisputable taste and connoisseurship,' Burge said. 'Mr. Trump selected the objects to be sold himself, mainly because their size and fragility that make them impractical for the house's new function as a club.'
Some of the top lots in the sale will be a pair of Louis XIV kingwood marquetry commodes, estimated to bring up to $250,000; a massive 17th century Spanish carpet, $60,000; a painted Italian bureau-cabinet, $40, 000; a pair of Italian rococo giltwood console tables, $40,000; a Russian embroidered altar panel, $20,000; and an Edwardian satinwood commode, $15,000. Mrs. Post played hostess to presidents, princes and celebrities at Mar-A-Lago and gave the last of her famous parties, which always included some square dancing, in 1967. She left the estate to the federal government as a guest house but it was finally returned to her estate because the upkeep was too expensive. Trump purchased it in 1985 as a winter home but has used it only occasionally. Another of Post's five homes, 'Hillwood' in Washington, D. C., is a public museum noted for its collection of Russian imperial art and decorative objects collected by Post when she was the wife of Ambassador to Russia Joseph E. Davies.
