When its construction began in July 1918, it was to be called the Touchstone Convalescent Club, and it was intended to be a hospital for the wounded of World War I.

Paris Singer and his good friend, the architect Addison Mizner, were visiting Palm Beach in the spring of 1918.

(The site at the west end of Worth Avenue formerly contained Alligator Joe's, a tourist attraction.

[3]) By November 1918 seven residential villas and a medical center had been built on the north side of Worth Avenue, across from the main building.

[4]: 44  Singer sent out as many as 300,000 invitations to eligible Army and Navy officers, who had to be screened and had to be able to pay their own room and board.

[4]: 47  There was a main building, eight separate villas, tennis courts, a parking garage across the street, and a yacht basin.

For its second season in 1920, Mizner supervised the construction of a nine-hole golf course and the landscaping of the club's 60 acres.

Guest, she and her husband were temporarily suspended from the club after they brought Jewish guests—Estée Lauder and her husband—to a party there in 1972.

[18] Joseph Kennedy, father of the slain president, resigned his membership in the early '60s "to avoid scrutiny for belonging to a club known for excluding African-American and Jewish people.

[20]"And I know that people have called me on the phone when I—in the first years, and said I have so and so guest in my house, he's the president of some big university, he's Jewish, can I bring him to the Everglades Club?