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St. Augustine is the nation’s oldest city, but when you’re there you see more than the Spanish and British on the historic downtown. You’ll see a lot of Henry Flagler. Yes, there’s Flagler College with his statute outside the main entrance on King Street, but a couple other buildings on that street were also owned by him. Flagler owned three different hotels in town. The college was formerly the Ponce de Leon, directly across from that was the Alcazar (which is now the Lightner Museum and the city town hall, and adjacent to that property was the Cordova, now the Casa Monica which is the only one still a hotel today. But it wasn’t always that way. From the time I was born, until after I moved from St. Augustine to go to college, building now known ad the Casa Monica was the courthouse for St. Johns County. I remember my parents and grandparents having jury duty there and it wasn’t until after I was away at college that it was sold and made back into a hotel.
If you get a chance to walk the grounds of Flagler College, you’ll instantly feel the history and appreciate the architecture and design of the building. Did you know Flagler and Thomas Edison were friends? That hotel was one of the first buildings in the country to be designed to have electricity and if you get a chance to check out the dining hall - you will see a mesmerizing collection of Tiffany glass. Henry Flagler’s final resting spot is in the historic city. At the Memorial Presbyterian Church, Henry Flagler, his first wife Mary, his daughter Jenny Louis and granddaughter Marjorie are entombed in the Flagler family mausoleum.
For more on Henry Flagler’s impact on St. Augustine, watch this video below:
For more on Flagler College, visit their website here.
For more on the history of St. Augustine, watch this short clip: