Flagler College: Attending School in Gilded Age Opulence

Imagine waking up in an opulent Gilded Age luxury hotel room, but it’s actually your dormitory room in college. You walk down an ornately carved wooden staircase under a gold-leafed rotunda with goddess frescoes. Then you cross a lush courtyard with a sundial fountain to go have breakfast in the school’s dining hall, enveloped in Tiffany glass windows. This is the former Ponce de Leon hotel from 1888 turned Flagler College since 1968 in St. Augustine, Florida.

Henry Flagler

According to Flagler College’s bio on Henry Flagler, he “was an industrialist tycoon, a founder of Standard Oil, and helped invent tourism in Florida.” Flagler was born in Hopewell, New York in 1830; moved to Bellevue, Ohio; met John D. Rockefeller and formed Standard Oil in 1870 where Flagler was the “brains” of the company. Flagler first visited Florida as a destination for his wife ailed with tuberculosis to convalesce. However, to get to St. Augustine, it was a discouraging series of trains, cabs, ferries. To make the trip less complicated, Flagler bought and converted the railway system so it became a simple train ride from the northeast to St. Augustine. Today, Flagler may be best known as a railroad tycoon, buying and connecting Florida’s railroads to a standard gauge system that would eventually become the Florida East Coast Railway Company.

Hotel Ponce de Leon

Flagler wrote of St. Augustine, “I liked the place and the climate, and it occurred to me very strongly that someone with sufficient means ought to provide accommodations for that class of people who are not sick, but come here to enjoy the climate, have plenty of money, but can find no satisfactory way of spending it.” So he constructed the first hotel made entirely of poured concrete using the local coquina stone. It took only 18 months and opened in 1888.

This hotel is also one of the first buildings in the United states wired for electricity by Thomas Edison - before the White House got electricity. Fun fact: Flagler hired “flickers” to turn the power on and off for the guests because they were too afraid to turn the switches on and off for themselves. Hotel guests also enjoyed filtered running water without the sulfur smell. Louis Comfort Tiffany led the interior design, hence all the Tiffany stained glass windows and chandeliers.

The hotel had 400 rooms and cost a flat rate of $4000 (Approximately $100,000 in today’s money) per person to stay at the hotel for a maximum of 3 months.

Flagler College

St. Augustine eventually found the former hotel in dilapidated conditions and it was marked to be demolished. Lawrence Lewis Jr. (related to Henry Flagler) had a vision to create a small, private liberal arts college on the old hotel grounds. He directed millions of dollars through foundations, family and personal funds to restore the buildings to its former glory. Flagler College opened as a women’s college in 1968 and became coed in 1971. Fun fact: they have its own D2 surf team.