The 1926 Addison Mizner original, the building that made Boca Raton into a destination, 294 rooms at the historic heart of the 337-acre resort, restored in the 2022 Rockwell Group programme without losing the Spanish Colonial bones.
“The 1926 Addison Mizner original, the building that made Boca Raton into a destination, 294 rooms at the historic heart of the 337-acre resort, restored in the 2022 Rockwell Group programme without losing the Spanish Colonial bones.”
The Cloister is the original Boca Raton hotel, the 1926 Spanish Colonial structure that Addison Mizner designed as the Cloister Inn for a planned 1,000-acre Mizner Development Corporation resort city that the Florida land bust ultimately cut short. Mizner's design borrowed from the cloister monasteries of Andalusia and Catalonia: a pink stucco envelope, barrel-tile roofs, hand-wrought ironwork, painted ceilings, arcaded courtyards, and a colonnaded loggia overlooking the formal Spanish gardens that still front the building today. The hotel opened on February 6, 1926, ran as the Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn for one year, then passed to Philadelphia utility millionaire Clarence Geist who expanded the property with architect Schultze and Weaver and reopened it as the Boca Raton Club in 1930. The U.S. Army Air Force took the property over during World War II (officially the most luxurious barracks in American military history) and the hotel returned to civilian operation in 1945.
The Cloister now functions as the historic wing of the 337-acre Boca Raton resort, alongside the 1969 Boca Raton Tower, the oceanfront Beach Club, the Yacht Club, and the Bungalows. The Cloister wing carries 294 of the resort's ~1,000 keys and is the headline accommodation product for guests who specifically want the Mizner-era room and the Spanish gardens view. The 2022 renovation, the largest single-property hotel restoration programme in Florida history and led overall by Rockwell Group, refurbished every Cloister room, restored the historic lobby ceilings and the loggia detailing, brought all of the bathrooms to a contemporary marble standard, and re-laid the public areas of the original 1926 building intact. The redesign treats Mizner's bones as the central asset, not as a renovation constraint.
Dining at the Cloister and across the connected resort is the property's deepest operational tentpole. Lucca by Marcus Samuelsson is the headline restaurant in the Cloister itself, opened 2022, contemporary Italian on the upper floor with garden views. The Cloister Bar & Lounge in the original 1926 lobby is the evening venue that holds the resort's cocktail-and-light-bites traffic. Across the wider campus, guests have access to eleven additional restaurants including Sadelle's at the Beach Club (Major Food Group), Marisol oceanfront pool, Flybridge at the Yacht Club, Kapok by Drew Nieporent, Principessa, and the Tradewinds steakhouse, the largest single-resort restaurant inventory in Florida.
Spa Palmera, the resort's 50,000-square-foot main spa, serves the Cloister and is one of the largest single-property spas in the United States. Six resort pools (including the adults-only oceanfront pool at the Beach Club), two championship golf courses (the Old Course and the Country Club), 27 tennis courts including 14 clay, a beach-services programme on the half-mile Atlantic beach, and a comprehensive children's programme via the resort's Kids Club at the Cloister round out the amenity inventory. For Boca Raton stays where the historic-resort proposition and the resort-scale amenity programme are both required, the Cloister is the obvious answer.
The Cloister carries the milestone-anniversary brief better than any other room product in the resort. The historic 1926 building, the Mizner gardens, the colonnaded loggia, the painted-ceiling lobby, and the Cloister Suites with garden-facing balconies are anniversary-suited in a way the post-war Tower and the rebuilt Beach Club cannot match. Lucca for the dinner, Cloister Bar for the post-dinner, Spa Palmera for the next morning, and the entire 337-acre estate as the after-breakfast walk.
Cloister honeymoons calibrate at multiple intensities: a Cloister Junior Suite for the standard week, a Cloister Suite for a milestone version, the Mizner Suite for the major one. The 1926 architecture and the formal Spanish gardens give the property a quietness the resort's other wings cannot replicate; the complimentary shuttle to the Beach Club gives Atlantic-side beach access without sacrificing the Cloister-room booking; Lucca and the dozen other resort restaurants handle every variant of the dinner brief.
The Cloister handles the small-board, executive-retreat brief that benefits from the resort-as-venue framing. The 337-acre scale absorbs 40, 80, or 200 attendees without the room ever feeling busy; the Cloister's historic public spaces handle the welcome reception and the closing dinner with a presence the Tower meeting rooms cannot match; the golf programme handles the second-day brief; the spa, the beach, and the dozen restaurants handle the off-hours. Strongest in the November to April window.
501 East Camino Real
Boca Raton, FL 33432
United States
On the main Boca Raton resort campus at Lake Boca; 1 mile to Mizner Park; 1 mile (complimentary shuttle) to the Beach Club; 30 minutes to FLL; 45 minutes to PBI
294 rooms and suites in the historic Cloister wing
Cloister Rooms from USD 479/night
Cloister Junior Suites from USD 850/night
Cloister Suites from USD 1,400/night
Mizner Suite from USD 5,500/night
Check-in: 4:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
Opened February 6, 1926 as the Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn (Addison Mizner, architect); restored by Rockwell Group 2022 as part of the wider Boca Raton renovation
Mizner-era Spanish Colonial architecture (1926)
Cloister Bar & Lounge in the original lobby
Lucca by Marcus Samuelsson
Spa Palmera (50,000 sq ft) on the main campus
Six pools and two golf courses
Twelve resort restaurants accessible to guests
Complimentary shuttle to the Beach Club
From $479/night. Reservations book three to four weeks ahead in the December to April winter-season window; one to two weeks for summer and shoulder. Holiday weekends (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Presidents' Day) book three months ahead.
Book This Hotel →The full 337-acre, ~1,000-room Mizner-era resort complex of which the Cloister is the original 1926 building.
The Forbes Five-Star, Five-Diamond Manalapan oceanfront resort 35 minutes north.
The oceanfront wing of the Boca Raton resort, reborn in the 2022 Rockwell Group renovation.