James Deering (November 12, 1859 – September 21, 1925) was an American executive in the management of his family's Deering Harvester Company and later International Harvester, as well as a socialite and an antiquities collector. He built his landmark Vizcaya estate, where he was an early 20th-century resident on Biscayne Bay in the present day Coconut Grove district of Miami, Florida. Begun in 1910, with architecture and gardens in a Mediterranean Revival style, Vizcaya was his passionate endeavor with artist Paul Chalfin, and his winter home from 1916 to his death in 1925. Early life James Deering was born in 1859 in the western Maine town of South Paris. He was the son of William Deering and his second wife, Clara Barbour Cummings Hamilton Deering. His older half-brother was the arts patron Charles Deering. His father, who had inherited the family woolen mill and owned large tracts of land in the Northeast, invested in a farm-equipment manufacturing company that he renamed the Deering Harvester Company. In 1873, he moved the family to Chicago, Illinois. The Deering Harvester Company's reaper machinery enabled farmers in the US Midwest to harvest an acre of grain per hour, an increase in productivity sufficient to enhance the profitability of Midwest agriculture significantly. The Deering Harvester Company grew in value, so that by the end of the 19th century the Deerings had become one of America's wealthiest families, and William Deering, James's father, was frugal in managing the family's spending, but did acquire a residence in newly fashionable St. Augustine, Florida, for the winter season. James Deering's older brother Charles joined the family business in the 1880s, after attending the United States Naval Academy and serving nine years in the Navy. James Deering attended Northwestern University for a year and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for another year before joining the company at the same time as Charles. Career James joined the Deering Harvester Company in 1880 as treasurer. In 1902, J.P. Morgan and Company purchased Deering Harvester and McCormick Reaper Company and merged them to form the International Harvester Corporation, the largest producer of agricultural machinery in the U.S. Deering became vice-president of the new corporation, responsible for the three Illinois manufacturing plants. In 1909, he was phased out of daily company affairs by J.P. Morgan interests. By the turn of the century, Deering owned homes on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, in the countryside