Historic St. Augustine Research Institute William L. Proctor Award Henry Flagler's opulent Hotel Ponce de Leon drew worldwide praise from the day its elaborately carved doors opened in 1888. Built in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style, the architectural and engineering marvel featured the talents of a team of renowned artisans, including the designs of architects John Carrère, Thomas Hastings, and Bernard Maybeck, electricity by Thomas Edison, and interior decoration and stained glass windows by Louis Tiffany. Hotel Ponce de Leon is the first work to present the building's complete history and detail its transformation into the heart of Flagler College. Leslee Keys, who assisted in the restoration, recounts the complicated construction of the hotel--the first major structure to be built entirely of poured concrete--and the efforts to preserve it and restore it to its former glory. The methods used at Flagler College have been recognized as best practices in historic preservation and decorative arts conservation, and today the campus is one of Florida's most visited heritage tourism destinations.

Near the end of the nineteenth century, Standard Oil millionaire Henry Morrison Flagler ventured to St. Augustine, Florida, America's Oldest City, and transformed it into an exotic travel destination for the social elite. He raised magnificent, fanciful Spanish Renaissance hotel palaces on what had been orange grove and salt marsh. Then he connected his creation with the outside world by building a modern railroad system. Flagler's hotels stand as monuments to innovation in architecture and engineering. They were the first large buildings in the United States constructed of poured concrete, and they pioneered use of novel amenities like electric lights, steam heat, and elevators. They are still a vital part of modern St. Augustine. The Ponce de Leon, Flaglers preeminent hotel, now houses Flagler College; the Alcazar now holds the City Hall and the Lightner Museum. Only the Casa Monica (previously called the Cordova) is presently a hotel.

A guide to visiting the odd and less known tourist attractions in the state of Florida.

Florida Book Awards, Bronze Medal for Florida Nonfiction Florida Historical Society Charlton Tebeau Book Award Arguably no man did more to make over a city—or a state—than Henry Morrison Flagler. Almost single-handedly, he transformed the east coast of Florida from a remote frontier into the winter playground of America’s elite. Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine tells the story of how one of the wealthiest men in America spared no expense in transforming the country’s “Oldest City” into the “Newport of the South.” He built railroads into remote areas where men feared to tread and erected palatial hotels on swampland. He funded hospitals and churches and improved streets and parks. The rich and famous flocked to his invented paradise. In tracing Flagler’s life and second career, Thomas Graham reveals much about the inner life of the former oil magnate and the demons that drove him to expand a coastal empire southward to Palm Beach, Miami, Key West, and finally Nassau. Graham also gives voice to the individuals history has forgotten: the women who wrote tourist books, the artists who decorated the hotels, the black servants who waited tables, and the journalists who filed society columns in the newspapers. Filled with fascinating details that bring the Gilded Age to life, this book will stand as the definitive history of Henry Flagler and his time in Florida.

Florida in the late 1800s was a paradise waiting to be discovered. During this period, two visionary tycoons of the Gilded Age set out on separate ventures that would transform the Sunshine State from Americas last frontier into a destination for the rich and famous. The grand hotels that Henry M. Flagler and Henry B. Plant opened at their planned resort sites offered a fantasy stay surrounded by all the accoutrements expected by sophisticated, Gilded Age patrons. Floridas Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age provides a look at these magnificent structures during their glory years, along with the fashionable entertainment and social and recreational pastimes that engaged their gilded guests.