Throwback Thursday

  
December 2016 - St. Augustine FL


Flagler College is a private four-year liberal arts college. It was founded in 1968 and offers 29 majors and 34 minors.

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Founded in 1968, the school is located on 19 acres (77,000 m2), the centerpiece of which is the Ponce de León Hotel.

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The Ponce de Leon Hotel was an exclusive hotel built by millionaire developer and Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler and completed in 1888. The Hotel Ponce de Leon was designed in the Spanish Renaissance style by the New York architects John Carrère and Thomas Hastings. The hotel was the first of its kind constructed entirely of poured concrete using the local coquina stone as aggregate.

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The hotel also was wired for electricity at the onset, with the power being supplied by D.C. generators supplied by Flagler's friend, Thomas Edison. When electricity was first put in Henry M. Flagler hired staff to turn power on and off for his residents, because the people staying at the hotel were too afraid to turn the switches on and off.

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Interior elements of the hotel are credited to Louis Comfort Tiffany, with Pottier and Stymus responsible for the furnishings. Murals in the rotunda and dining room were completed by the well-known artist George W. Maynard, who a decade later did murals in the Treasures Gallery at the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Noted Italian artist Virgilio Tojetti prepared the ceiling murals in the Grand Parlor.

 I had to check out the ladies' room, it had a fireplace!

inSPIREd Sunday

Sally and Beth host inSPIREd Sunday!  Sundays in my City  My Sunday Photo

December 2016 - St. Augustine FL

The Grace United Methodist Church is a historic church which Henry Flagler had constructed.  Built within a one year span (from 1886 to 1887), it was added to the U.S.National Register of Historic Places on November 29, 1979.

inSPIREd Sunday

Sally and Beth host inSPIREd Sunday! Sundays in my City My Sunday Photo

December 2016 - St. Augustine FL


The Memorial Presbyterian Church was built in 1889 by business tycoon and St. Augustine benefactor Henry Morrison Flagler and dedicated in honor of his daughter Jennie Louise Benedict, who died following complications from childbirth at sea the same year, hence the word Memorial.

How I wish we could have gone inside!

Designed by the New York architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings in the Second Renaissance Revival style and inspired by St Mark's Basilica in Venice, the church was built utilizing a novel construction technique pioneered by Franklin W. Smith, builder of the Villa Zorayda. This building method utilizing poured concrete mixed with crushed coquina stone, was utilized in Smith's Casa Monica Hotel, as well as in Flagler's Ponce de Leon Hotel and Alcazar Hotel, both of which last were designed by Carrère and Hastings, with construction overseen by Smith.

Like the Alcazar and Ponce de Leon, many of the architectural details were created with terra cotta.

Upon Flagler's death in 1913 he was interred in a marble mausoleum within the church beside his daughter Jennie Louise and her infant Marjorie, as well as his first wife Mary Harkness Flagler

St. Augustine Florida

December 2016 - St. Augustine FL

This covers our afternoon and next morning walk around St. Augustine. It is a town that I would like to spend some more time exploring as we didn't cover everything we would have liked to see, partly due to timing and also the cold.

St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement within the borders of the continental United States.

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We stayed at the Hilton, touted as the smallest Hilton in North America.

When Hilton built this hotel on the grounds of the former Monson Motor Lodge it paid tribute to its role in the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1964 there were numerous protests and demonstrations throughout St. Augustine.

On June 11, 1964 the demonstration moved to the front steps of the restaurant at the Monson Motor Lodge which was designated “whites only.” As Dr. King attempted to enter the restaurant, he was arrested, his only arrest in Florida. In protest, a group of black and white students jumped into the Monson Motor Lodge’s pool, which was, of course, designated “whites only.” The motel manager poured acid into the pool to get the protesters out of the water, and eventually everyone was arrested.


The concrete steps where Rev. King was standing when arrested were preserved, but the rest of the building and swimming pool are gone.

 

Once we checked in and donned our winter coats as it was cold, we headed out to explore the historic district.

Saint Augustine was founded 451 years ago on September 8, 1565, by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida's first governor. He named the settlement "San Agustín," as his ships bearing settlers, troops, and supplies from Spain had first sighted land in Florida eleven days earlier on August 28, the feast day of St. Augustine. The city served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years, and became the capital of British East Florida when the territory briefly changed hands between Spain and Britain.
We spent some time visiting the San Marcos Fort which I covered here.

Click here to visit St. Photios Church.

The oldest wooden school was covered in another post.

The Cathedral of St. Augustine.

The next morning after we found a place for breakfast we decided to look at the Flagler College grounds.
Click here for a detailed post about the college.

Across the street is City Hall.

On the National Register of Historic Places it was built in 1883 as the winter residence of Franklin Smith utilizing his method of construction of poured concrete and crushed coquina shell. It is built 1/10th the scale of a section of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain.

This museum is somewhere I would like to come back to see.

Some churches.

Ancient City Baptist

Grace Methodist

Memorial Presbyterian

Back to the hotel to check out.

We made one more stop at the Fountain of Youth.

World Golf Hall of Fame.