I since have learned about his hand in developing a lot more in the U.S. Southeast. One of those developments was the first luxury hotel in St. Augustine, the Ponce de Leon, in 1888.
I've also learned that Flagler was the founder of Standard Oil and was hugely responsible for developing the communities of Miami, Palm Beach and St. Augustine. Almost single-handedly -- and in multiple increments -- he brought rail transportation down the east coast of Florida and eventually through the Keys all the way to Key West, a project many thought was not worth the cost (it was occasionally referred to as "Flagler's Folly").
The Overseas Railroad in the Keys opened in 1912 and ran for 32 years before it closed after sustaining damage too costly to repair in the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. However, the remaining rail infrastructure was used later to build the Overseas Highway (U.S. 1) that spans the full Keys.
But I digress.
In St. Augustine, Flagler built the Ponce de Leon Hotel, which in the 1960s was transformed into the centerpiece of the new Flagler College. The hotel, built in Spanish Renaissance style architecture, survived through the years -- including the Great Depression -- even while other upscale hotels in the city did not. Once such hotel was the Alcazar -- also built by Flagler -- situated across King Street from the Ponce de Leon and is now the Lightner Museum. During World War II, the federal government took over Ponce de Leon and used it as a Coast Guard training Center.
Although the structure returned to a hotel operation after the war, its customer traffic gradually waned until it was no longer financially feasible to keep it open. It closed in 1967, but just a year later, it was transformed as part of newly opened Flagler College. Ponce de Leon Hall now serves as the school's administrative and academic center.
With limited time for exploration, I didn't make it to see all of the campus -- some buildings are a few blocks away. Sadly, I also didn't make it to the grounds of the Lightner Museum, another Spanish Renaissance architectural marvel. The museum, which holds fine art and antiquities (mostly 19th century), closed as a hotel in 1932. Its new life as a museum began in 1949.
Leading off the post is a photo of the main entryway to Ponce de Leon Hall, outside of which stands a statue of Henry Flagler. Once you pass through the gates there, you come upon a plaza featuring a circular fountain (first photo below). The main building overlooks the fountain. The third photo below is a shot of the front facade of Lightner Museum.
To view a larger and sharper version of any image here, just click on the photo. To see a full gallery of images from my visit to Flagler College, click on the link in this sentence.
Photo geek stuff: All shots were taken with my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di PZD VC lens equipped with a polarizing filter. I bracketed each composition for three exposures to allow for possible melding of those three frames into one in post-processing using Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software. While some images here have been treated in Photomatix, most are single-frame shots.
If you ever get to the campus to check it out, don't pass up the chance to get inside the rotunda of Ponce de Leon Hall. That's where you'll find the scenes you see pictured above and below. The school offers campus tours; we didn't have time to devote to a lengthy tour, but fortunately, we were able to take in the rotunda.
Next up: Almost everything else, St. Augustine
Previous posts in this series:
Savannah at night
Savannah in daylight
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