Ponce de Leon Hotel
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The Hotel Ponce de Leon, also known as The Ponce, was a luxury hotel in St. Augustine, Florida, built by millionaire developer and Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler. Built between 1885–1887, the winter resort opened in January 1888. 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 Ponce de León Hotel, today Flagler College
The Hotel Ponce de Leon dining room, with Tiffany stained glass windows
The front facade of the hotel, facing King Street in downtown St. Augustine.
An interior view of the hotel's rotunda and ceiling mural.
St. Augustine, Florida
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St. Augustine is a city in and the county seat of St. Johns County located 40 miles south of downtown Jacksonville. The city is on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States.
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés moved his colony to the settlement of the Seloy tribe of the Timucua. Their chief gave them the Great House, a structure able to hold several hundred people. Around this meeting house the Spanish dug a moat and added fortifications.
Slave Market, St. Augustine, Florida in 1886
St. Augustine in 1891 from the former San Marco Hotel, Spanish St. on left, Huguenot Cemetery lower left corner, Cordova St. on right
View of St. Augustine from the top of the lighthouse on Anastasia Island