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Flagler College is a private, four year liberal arts college in St Augustine, Florida which will celebrate its 44th anniversary this year, but the structure itself is much older than that. Flagler is ranked by Princeton Review as one of the top tier southeastern colleges and its campus is certainly one of the most beautiful in the United States. Flagler is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The college has tended this breathtaking 124 year old building well, as they have spent in excess of 43 million dollars in restoration of the historic building that was once the Ponce de Leon Hotel.
Above is the Ponce de Leon Hotel as it looked in 1901 and beside it is Flagler College as it appears today.
The Ponce de Leon hotel was built in 1888 by Henry Flagler, a New York entrepreneur and cofounder of Standard Oil, who became interested in the historic city of St. Augustine and its potential as a winter resort. The hotel provided a jumping off point for Henry Flagler who began subsequent development of railways along the east coast of Florida and spurred rapid development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which became the Gilded Age in Florida.
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Flagler chose the Spanish Renaissance Revival style so that the hotel's design would compliment its historic surroundings. He retained Louis C. Tiffany to decorate the interior of the hotel. Tiffany used stained glass, mosaics and terra cotta relief on the walls and ceilings and commissioned several grand murals.
The hotel was the first large scale building constructed entirely of poured concrete. The popularity of "the Ponce" and its style strongly influenced the architecture of southern Florida for the next fifty years.
Originally, the twin towers of the hotel were water storage tanks which contained 8,000 gallons each, providing running water for hotel guests (during World War II, one of the towers served as a brig when the hotel was occupied by the U.S. Coast Guard as a training center). The Hotel Ponce de Leon was, thanks to the Edison Electric Company, one of the first buildings in the nation to have electricity.
Dining Hall with Tiffany Windows
Ceiling of the Dining Hall
During the 1880s and 1890s, the headwaiter of the hotel was one Frank Thompson, who was a pioneer civil rights advocate and organized the Cuban Giants, a black baseball team.
This site provides links to many stunning photos along with a fact sheet of building supplies used in the original construction, a listing of suppliers including Tiffany and Edison, more detailed information on the murals, important dates in the hotel's history and many many more nuggets of fascinating information.
This link contains a few vintage photos and a menu from the hotel's opening night, January 10, 1888.