guests often requested rooms "over by the breakers." Further, the Royal Poinciana Hotel underwent significant expansions in 1899 and 1901, which increased the number of rooms to 1,081, allowing accommodations for nearly 2,000 guests. The expansion in 1899 also added a two-story veranda, dining room, saltwater pool, golf course, and shooting range; the 1901 expansion also saw the construction of the hotel's own electrical power plant. These expansions lengthened the hotel's corridors to more than , requiring bellhops to deliver messages from guests to the front desk or vice versa via bicycle, as telephones were still a rare luxury. In total, the Royal Poinciana Hotel stretched along Lake Worth for a distance of , reportedly making it both the largest hotel and largest wooden structure in the world at the time. Whitehall was completed in 1902, a gift from Flagler to Mary Lily Kenan, his third wife. However, her disapproval of the noise and smell produced by the trains, which then ran next to the house, led to the relocation of the railroad bridge and tracks to the north side of the Royal Poinciana Hotel by 1903, near where the Flagler Memorial Bridge stands today. On June 9 of that year, a massive fire ignited at The Breakers. Although efforts to the save The Breakers proved futile, firefighters stopped flames from destroying nearby buildings, including the Royal Poinciana Hotel, which "caught [fire] in half a dozen places, but superhuman efforts prevented its destruction.", according to the Gretna Breeze. In September 1903, a hurricane destroyed the railway approach near the entrance of the hotel, shattered many windows, and uprooted several cocoanut palm trees. The New York Times noted that by 1904, 10 years after the Royal Poinciana Hotel opened, Palm Beach was a popular tourist destination for parties, golf, tennis, boating, bathing, and fishing. The Royal Poinciana Hotel hosted a celebration for the establishment of Palm Beach County in 1909, alongside Independence Day festivities, which drew hundreds of people from Fort Pierce to Miami and included two amateur baseball games, musical performances by a local band, and a fireworks display. Following Flagler's death in May 1913, his family held a small funeral in St. Augustine, though a memorial service occurred at the Royal Poinciana Chapel during the following March. Patrons were shuttled between the Royal Poinciana Hotel and The Breakers along a pine trail in wheeled wicker chairs, often referred to