And I bring you back to my Florida ! This is a great tourist spot ,and was very near me while living there, just 50 minutes from it by car with many memorable moments with the family, I have other posts on the City of Saint Augustine , but again, found some older pictures not in my blog yet but should be, Going down memory lane again with wonderful experiences to remember forever, Therefore, here is my take on the memorable Flagler College of Saint Augustine !!! Hope you enjoy the post as I.
The City of Saint Augustine is located in Saint John county on the Atlantic coast. It is about 60 km (37 mi) from Jacksonvilleand 90 km ( 56 mi) fromDaytona Beach, and 73 km (45 mi ) from my former home ! One of my best memories of the town was the Flagler College (univ) a wonderful place where I came to play soccer/football against them and usually won! I came later to show it off to parents, wife and boys for many more years. Flagler College 74 King St.: is a unique combination of the past and present, and an architectural icon of the city of Saint Augustine. The college, founded in 1968, is centered on a former luxury hotel, the Ponce de Leon hotel, built in 1888 at the request of the industrialist Henry Morrison Flagler. Originally for women only, the college became coeducational in 1971. I began playing in the 1978-1982 years, and later visit alone and with the family until 2003, Memories forever!
The anecdote is that our univ ERAU did not provided a bus to go to the soccer/football games and we needed to drive the 12 pas vans ourselves, I already criss crossing the State of Florida volunteer each time to do the driving, Our coach was very strict from Leicester England ,former Royal Air Force captain so I was the crazy guy on the team driving first to the women’s dormitory ,and of course Flagler College lol !!! Memories forever !!! To give credit to this wonderful spot in my life even competitevily oppose, Flagler College, In 2022, Veranda magazine named the campus “One of the Most Beautiful College Campuses Around the World,” and mentioned its palatial, renovated ballroom with walls of original Tiffany stained glass windows. The ballroom now serves as the dining hall for students. The same year, Architectural Digest mentioned its buildings in “One of the 8 Most Unexpected Places to See World-Class Architecture in the U.S.” In 2024, U.S. News and World Report magazine named it #2 in Most Innovative Schools, #3 Best Regional Colleges in the South, #5 in Best Undergraduate Teaching, and #14 in Best Value Schools.
The story goes that in 1887, Thomas Edison and the Edison Electric Company installed the world’s largest incandescent lighting plant at the Ponce de Leon Hotel, also making it the first building in the country to be designed with electric wiring throughout. Upon opening in January 1888, the structure was considered an engineering and architectural marvel due to it being the largest structure made of poured concrete at the time, plus modern amenities like electricity, running water, game rooms, private parlors , and of course all of the Gilded Age splendor inside and out. The hotel notable guests included Presidents Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and John F Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B Johnson, writers Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Ernest Hemingway, Edna Ferber, star athlete Babe Ruth, and so many more. The Ponce de Leon Hotel saw major success which prompted Mr Flagler to build Hotel Alcazar across the street, now the Lightner Museum (see post) and City Hall. The hotel was taken over by the federal government during WWII. It was primarily used as a Coast Guard Training Center; the hotel was permanently closed in 1967. In 1968, it was reopened as the Flagler college.
Some of the anecdotes and historical facts about the Ponce de Leon Hotel I like, The hotel was designed in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style as the first major project of the New York architecture firm Carrère & Hastings, which gained world renown for more than 600 projects, including the House and Senate Office Buildings flanking the US Capitol. Their final project was the New York Public Library. The headwaiter of the Ponce de Leon Hotel in the 1880s and 1890s was Frank Thompson, who was a pioneer civil rights advocate and an organizer of the professional black baseball team that became the Cuban Giants. One member of the team, Frank Grant, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Henry Flagler established an artist colony at the hotel, with an Artists’ Studios building constructed to the rear of the resort. The colony attracted many up-and-coming American artists of the time, including Martin Johnson Heade, who painted, among other works, “Giant Magnolias on a Blue Cloth” in Studio No. 7. The painting now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Heade has been honored on a U.S. postage stamp. Other works of his are in the White House and various significant galleries. Other artists of the colony included Felix de Crano, Reynolds Beal, Arthur Vidal Diehl, the flower painter Albert Fuller Graves, the Provincetown artist and teacher Charles Webster Hawthorne, the impressionist painter Harry L. Hoffman, and Heinrich Pfeiffer During the Great Depression (1929-39), the US federal government had organized several of its direct aid programs in the city with the goal of revitalizing the area’s tourism economy. Authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Frost, John Dos Passos, and, most particularly, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, visited or lived in Saint Augustine during this time, and there was an active community of artists.
The official Flagler College on its history : https://www.flagler.edu/about/our-history
The city of St Augustine tourist office on Flagler college : https://www.visitstaugustine.com/thing-to-do/flagler-college
There you go folks, this Saint Augustine is a must when visiting Florida , me think, Always looking forward to one day revisit it ,eventually, Again, hope you have enjoy this post on the memorable Flagler College of Saint Augustine as I
And remember, happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all !!!
Paris1972-Versailles2003 