There is a private railcar parked in a glass pavilion behind a 75-room house in Palm Beach, and for the price of admission you can walk up the steps and stand inside it. Railcar No. 91 was built in 1886 for Henry Flagler, it sits in the Flagler Kenan Pavilion at the back of the property, and it is covered by the same ticket that gets you into the house. Plenty of people drive over the bridge for lunch on Worth Avenue without ever realizing it is back there.

Whitehall is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 5, and Sunday 12 to 5. It is about half an hour north of Boca. Here is what the $28 actually buys you, and what it does not.

What You're Getting Into

One ticket covers three separate things: both floors of the house, the grounds around it, and the pavilion out back with the railcar. That is the museum's own description of the visit, and it is worth knowing up front, because the guided tour only handles one of the three.

The house was finished in 1902 and it is a National Historic Landmark now. The first floor is the showpiece, all marble and gold leaf and painted ceilings, and it is the part a docent walks you through. The second floor is the guest rooms and the family rooms, and you do that one at your own pace with an audio wand. Then you walk out the back to the pavilion, where the railcar sits with the water behind it, and you climb aboard. It has a salon, a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen, all restored, and you move through the whole thing.

Admission is $28 for anyone 13 and up, $14 for kids 6 to 12, and free for 5 and under. Anyone under 18 has to have an adult with them. After that, almost everything is free. The docent tours are included. So are the audio wands, the museum's phone guide through Bloomberg Connects, printed self-guide brochures in five languages, and a kids' activity booklet. So is the parking lot out front, which matters more than it sounds like it should on an island where parking usually does not go that way.

Two honest notes about September. There is no special exhibition up right now. The spring show closed in May and the fall exhibition, America Takes the Stage: From the White City to Whitehall, does not open until November 10. So this month the house itself is the whole visit. The upside is the second one: Whitehall is fully air conditioned, which makes it one of the better ways to spend two hours outdoors-adjacent in a South Florida September without melting.

The Insider Move

Get there for the 11 am docent tour. Tuesday through Saturday there are three, at 11, 12:30 and 2. On Sunday there are only two, at 12:30 and 2, so there is no 11 am option if you go on a Sunday. They are free with your ticket, each one is capped at 35 people, and they run about an hour. Take the first one and you still have the whole afternoon for the upstairs and the railcar, neither of which the guided tour covers.

Then the thing that trips people up: leave your bag in the car. Backpacks of any size are not allowed inside. Neither are large bags or purses, or food or drink, and there is no coat check or locker to stash any of it in. Strollers cannot come in either, though there is a stroller parking area outside the Museum Shop. Sort that out in the parking lot and you save yourself the walk back.

Last one: the café in the pavilion is closed for the season. Tea service does not start again until the day after Thanksgiving, and the casual picnic option comes from that same kitchen, so both are out right now. Eat before you go or plan lunch across the bridge.

What People Are Saying

The advice that comes up again and again from visitors is the same one the museum's own site implies: the docent tour is only the first floor, so budget time to do the upstairs and the railcar yourself afterward. Reviewers who timed their arrival for the 11 am tour say they were glad they did, and several write in specifically to praise their docent by name, which is not something people usually bother to do. Two to three hours is what most visitors say the full property takes, and people using the audio guide room by room report closer to three or four. The $28 draws the occasional grumble, usually followed immediately by the reviewer saying it was worth it anyway.

A Little Background

When Whitehall was finished in 1902, the New York Herald called it "more wonderful than any palace in Europe." That is the museum's own favorite line about the place, and standing in the front hall it does not read as much of a stretch.

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