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Henry Morrison Flagler ~ The Railroad Tycoon's Empire

He was a key figure in the development of the Atlantic coast of Florida and founder of what became the Florida East Coast Railway.

Flagler became acquainted with John D. Rockefeller, who worked as a commission agent with Hewitt and Tuttle for the Harkness Grain Company. By the mid-1860s, Cleveland had become the center of the oil refining industry in America and Rockefeller left the grain business to start his own oil refinery. Rockefeller worked in association with chemist and inventor Samuel Andrews. The Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler partnership was formed with Flagler in control of Harkness' interest. The partnership eventually grew into the Standard Oil Corporation. He first came to Jacksonville, Florida, after his wife Mary became ill in 1878.

1904 Political cartoon showing a Standard Oil tank as an octopus with many tentacles wrapped around the steel, copper, and shipping industries, as well as a state house, the U.S. Capitol, and one tentacle reaching for the White House.

By financing construction of the Florida East Coast Railway, he made it possible for cities to grow along the Atlantic Ocean coastline. Because of the railroad, crops could be raised and shipped, building materials could be hauled, and people, tourists, workers, and residents could be shuttled After Mary died, Flagler remarried and in 1885 began building the 540-room Hotel Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine. He built a second hotel and purchased yet another in the city.

Henry Flagler’s steam yacht Alicia, 160’ long at the waterline, custom built in 1890 by Harlan and Hollingsworth of Wilmington, Delaware.

Henry M. Flagler's Alcazar Hotel, which was built in 1888

The Alcazar Hotel, which was built in 1888. Henry M. Flagler commissioned architects Carrere and Hastings to construct this architectural masterpiece. The hotel has a three-story ballroom, steam room, massage parlor, sulfur baths, gymnasium, a casino and the world’s largest indoor pool. Just last year they added another 40 rooms as well as electricity. Edison installed two of his direct current dynamos to light the hotel. The Alcazar attracts many wealthy patrons, including former and future American president Grover Cleveland. He came here in 1889, between his two terms in office, to check out the casino. That same year Secretary of State Thomas Bayard took a few laps in the pool. At $3.50 a night, most people could never afford to stay here.

The Alcazar 1898

The Alcazar 1898 Pool

The Alcazar 1905

The Alcazar 1905 Pool

Hotel Alcazar Suana & Bath

Hotel Alcazar Palor

The Alcazar closed during the Depression. By 1932, those heady days will be gone. What with the Great Depression and the waning tourist trade moving further down the coast, the hotel had to be closed.

The Lightner Museum is housed in the former Alcazar Hotel 

In 1946 Chicago publisher Otto C. Lightner bought the Alcazar Hotel do house his vast collection of Victoriana, as the perfect place to house his Victorian-era collection of antiques. He opened it as a museum two years later and turned the building over to the City of St. Augustine.

St. Augustine Hotel Ponce de Leon 1888

The Ponce de Leon Hotel was built by millionaire Henry Morrison Flagler, Standard Oil co-founder (with John D. Rockefeller) and opened in 1888. Flagler had taken his second wife on a honeymoon to Jacksonville and further south to the seaside village of St. Augustine (the oldest permanent European settlement in the United States). Flagler loved the breathtaking expanse of sea and shore, and enjoyed the clear skies and balmy weather when most of the rest of the country's residents (then concentrated in the northeast) were locked in by ice and snow.

Parlor at the Hotel Ponce de Leon Rotunda 1889

http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/3d/staughot/staughot.htm#13

The Palor at Ponce de Leon Hotel 

The Palor at Ponce de Leon Hotel

Ladies entrance to the Ponce de Leon Hotel

Ball Room

Dining Room

Interior 1891

Interior

1902

Robert N. Dennis, his collection of stereoscopic views

1930 Front Enterance

In 1887 Flagler hired two young architects from the prominent New York firm, McKim, Mead, and White, to design the hotel. With the design of the Ponce de Leon, John Carrere and Thomas Hastings launched a new architectural firm, Carrere & Hastings, which would gain national prominence. Flagler chose the Spanish Renaissance Revival style so that the hotel's design would compliment its historic surroundings. Retained to decorate the interior of the hotel, Louis C. Tiffany used stained glass, mosaics and terra cotta relief on the walls and ceilings and commissioned several grand murals. The hotel was the first large scale building constructed entirely of poured concrete. The popularity of "the Ponce" and its style strongly influenced the architecture of southern Florida for the next fifty years. The success of the Hotel Ponce de Leon was episodic, immediately contending with a yellow fever epidemic and the worst freeze in state history in 1895. St. Augustine's weather proved not to be as warm and sunny as other resort areas that were developed further south along the peninila, and the town never boomed as a winter resort. However, toursits did come during the first decades of the 20th century, and the Ponce de Leon was one of only three Flagler Hotels to survive the Great Depression.

Ponce de Leon Hotel

Following a lull in tourism during World War II, the hotel attracted large crowds for several years, but decline resumed and in 1967 the hotel closed and was sold to Flagler College. It has been renovated and retains most of its original integrity.

The former Hotel Ponce de León becomes Flagler College 1967

Flagler College in 2005, the former Hotel Ponce de León

Mr. Flagler's Memorial Church in St Augustine 1889

The 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 the same year.

South facade

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.

Flagler's Ormand Hotel 1889

He purchased a regional railroad serving northern Florida to support his hotel business, built a railroad bridge over the St. Johns River and bought the Ormond Hotel just north of Daytona. By spring of 1889, the Florida East Coast Railway extended its service from Jacksonville to Daytona, and railroad magnate Henry Flagler bought The Ormond Hotel, built by John Anderson and J. D. Price (their hotel opened on January 1, 1888). Henry enlarged it to handle 600 guests.

1905

The Colonial

Flagler's Palm Beach Hotel Royal Poinciana 1894

Henry Flagler opened the Royal Poinciana Hotel in Palm Beach on February 11, 1894 with only 17 guests. The paint was fresh, and the electric lighting was so new it was advertised as a unique amenity. Flagler had built this palace as a winter playground for America’s richest travelers, planting it right off the main line of his Florida East Coast Railway. If they so chose, his guests could conduct their private railway cars right up to the hotel’s entrance.

Dining room 1894 ~ Hotel Royal Poinciana

Vanderbilt family at Royal Poinciana Hotel, 1896 

1900 Hotel Royal Poinciana

1920s Porch of the Royal Poinciana 

Flagler spared little if any expense entertaining his wealthy patrons. Guests could play golf, swim in the pool, or listen to the orchestra, which played every day in the hotel pavilion.

1925 Hotel Royal Poinciana ~ Aerial view during its final years 

The Breakers Palm Beach 1896

The Palm Beach Inn ~ prior to the name change

First known as The Palm Beach Inn, it was opened on January 16, 1896 by railroad tycoon Henry Flagler to accommodate travelers on his Florida East Coast Railway. On on March 18, 1925, The Breakers Hotel burned down. The contractors decided to abandon the wooden construction for fire proof concrete. Built by 1,200 construction workers, the hotel reopened on December 29, 1926, to considerable acclaim.

1901

1901 Horse-drawn railway car passing by the Breakers Hotel

FL East Coast mule train: shuttled guests between the Royal Poinciana Hotel and The Breakers

Beginning in 1898, the guests of the Royal Poinciana Hotel and The Breakers were within walking distance of a major new attraction: Bradley’s Beach Club

Bradley’s Beach Club

The Breakers Golf Course 1900's 

1918

1925 2nd fire

1927

Royal Palm Hotel 1897

There were 450 guest rooms and suites. The average guest room was twelve feet by eighteen feet, and 100 of the rooms had private baths. The main dining room would seat 500 guests. A second dining room was for maids and children. There were also private dining rooms. There were parlors, a billiards room, other game rooms, a 45-foot (14 m) by 50-foot (15 m) ballroom, and 100 dressing rooms at the swimming pool. The boiler room, electric plant, kitchens, laundry and ice-makers were in a separate building. The hotel had a staff of 300, including sixteen cooks. Although, at the insistence of Julia Tuttle, a clause prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages had been included in all land deeds for the new city of Miami, the Royal Palm Hotel had an exemption to serve alcohol to its guests during the three months of the tourist season.

Royal Palm Hotel 1910

Royal Palm Hotel 1912

Royal Palm Hotel Dining Room

Royal Palm Hotel Pool

1928-9

Flaglers Royal Poinciana Chapel

Flagler's Woodlawn Cemetery

“That Which Is So Universal As Death Must Be A Blessing"

The main entrance to the beautiful Woodlawn Cemetery is guarded by a massive gate of iron, black with letters of bronze. The avenues are of that pure white splendor which is characteristic of all roads in this vicinity.” The ornamental iron gateway bore that inscription in bronze letters.

The original iron gates, which came down in 1925 when Dixie Highway was widened and the cemetery lost more than an acre of its area, the current concrete arch was built.

The Whitehall

Flagler's winter mansion 1902

In 1902, Flagler built a 100,000-square foot mansion in Palm Beach as a gift for his third wife, Mary Lily Kenan. He called it the Whitehall.

1910 Mr. and Mrs. Henry M. Flagler

Little more than a year later, Flagler fell down a flight of stairs at the Whitehall and never recovered from his injuries, dying on May 20, 1913 at age 83. He was buried in St. Augustine next to his two daughters, Jennie Louise and Carrie, and his first wife, Mary Harkness.

The Whitehall

The Whitehall became The Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in 1960 after the mansion was purchased by a non-profit corporation founded by one of Henry Flagler's granddaughters, Jean Flagler Matthews. It is on the National Registry of Historic Landmarks and is the setting for numerous galas and balls every year. Open to the public, the museum also features guided tours, exhibits and special programs.