Henry Flagler's Hotel - The Ponce de León

When Henry Flagler retired from Standard Oil, he decided to take on development of Florida as his second career. This not only involved expanding the railroad but also building hotels in key cities along the rail route.

His first big hotel was the Ponce de León in St. Augustine, Florida. The hotel was architected by Carrère and Hastings and built in 1887. Carrère and Hastings were upstarts in the world of architecture. Henry''s backing of the firm helped them later garner makor comissions inluding the design of the New York Public Library building (in existence today). (Click here to see an interesting video presentation about Carrère and Hastings' contribution to Gilded Age Beaux-Arts architecture) .

The Ponce de León was "THE" hotel of its day, although it was only open for part of the winter "season".

The hotel went into disrepair and was in danger of being demolished when the idea evolved to develop it into a college. This is the only thing that saved this amazing structure and it is functioning as Flagler College today.

This Flagler College intro video has a lot of great shots of the hotel. In fact, most of what you see as the college in this video was in fact the old hotel.

If you get a chance to visit St. Augustine, you will see two other hotels that Flagler owned/developed right across the street from the Ponce de Leon - The Casa Monica (he bought) and The Alcazar which he built as an overflow for the Ponce de Leon and as a lower cost hotel. It's a great visit - if you are in Florida...give it a go!