Flagler College (Hotel Ponce de Leon)
Henry Flagler opened the Hotel Ponce de Leon on January 10, 1888 as a Gilded Age winter resort, a Spanish Colonial Revival landmark designed by Carrère & Hastings, poured from concrete and coquina and among the first American buildings wired for electricity under Thomas Edison; it became the heart of Flagler College in 1968. Flagler died in 1913 and lay in state within these walls, and legend holds a white-suited figure with a cane still drifts through the rotunda and fourth-floor balcony, his face glimpsed in reflective surfaces.
His troubled second wife, Ida Alice, is said to wander the women's wing, while a mistress kept in a fourth-floor suite reportedly took her own life and lingers as a shadowy "Woman in Black." The history is solid; the spirits stay firmly in campus legend.
📍 74 King St, St. Augustine, FL 32084, St. Augustine, FL · Get directions