Elizabeth Ballantine

The Mill Reef Club was founded in 1947 on the Caribbean island of Antigua. The visionary American architect who championed the 1,500-acre Club was Robertson “Happy” Ward. Ward solicited interest in the Club among a who’s who of American industrialists and leading citizens, including Mellons, DuPonts, Cowles, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and poet Archibald MacLeish. Ward encouraged members who built homes on Club property to adhere to a mid-century vernacular. Houses were positioned to catch prevailing winds for cooling purposes, and cisterns and catchments were added to collect and store rainwater. This new, full-color coffee-table book celebrates 75 years of the evolution of architecture to what former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter terms “High WASP Modernism. A succession of nearly 300 Mill Reef house owners have reimagined Happy Ward’s original design decisions in the update and remodel of 50 private houses at the club. . The fanciful sense of whimsy, initiated by Ward, is echoed today by modern architects and designers who still bow to the founder’s conception and are today arbiters of an updated Mill Reef aesthetic. With 385 color photos and 324 pages, the book is a stunning introduction to one of the world’s most exclusive private clubs.

In 1946, Robertson “Happy” Ward, the famed mid-century modernist, embarked on the Caribbean’s most successful architectural endeavor: erecting the Mill Reef Club in Antigua, West Indies. At a time when images of nuclear war stalked the American imagination and the great American architects were preoccupied with the grimmer strains of modernism—skyscrapers, airports, and bunkers—Ward rebelled: in the Mill Reef Club, he somehow monumentalized American whimsy. For over sixty years, the Mill Reef Club has been the most celebrated private resort in the Caribbean. Its reputation for prizing grace, rum punches, and unforced intellectualism endures to this day; indeed, this is what people mean by “Mill Reef style.” This achievement is Ward’s; from the first, Ward’s vision was as sociological as it was architectural. All architecture is social engineering. Ward was determined to engineer a society in which pretension was impossible, nature was undeniable, and pleasures were infinite. Mill Reef Style presents an illustrated study of that amazing vision.

In 1946, Robertson “Happy” Ward, the famed mid-century modernist, embarked on the Caribbean’s most successful architectural endeavor: erecting the Mill Reef Club in Antigua, West Indies. At a time when images of nuclear war stalked the American imagination and the great American architects were preoccupied with the grimmer strains of modernism—skyscrapers, airports, and bunkers—Ward rebelled: in the Mill Reef Club, he somehow monumentalized American whimsy. For over sixty years, the Mill Reef Club has been the most celebrated private resort in the Caribbean. Its reputation for prizing grace, rum punches, and unforced intellectualism endures to this day; indeed, this is what people mean by “Mill Reef style.” This achievement is Ward’s; from the first, Ward’s vision was as sociological as it was architectural. All architecture is social engineering. Ward was determined to engineer a society in which pretension was impossible, nature was undeniable, and pleasures were infinite. Mill Reef Style presents an illustrated study of that amazing vision.