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, built of poured concrete and coquina, and among the first American buildings wired for electricity under Thomas Edison's direction; it became the centerpiece of Flagler College in 1968. Flagler died in 1913 and lay in state within these walls, and legend holds that his spirit never left — a white-suited figure with a cane is said to drift through the rotunda and fourth-floor balcony, with doors that swing on their own and his face glimpsed in reflective surfaces. His troubled second wife, Ida Alice, is said to wander the women's wing, drawn to his portrait, while the most whispered tale concerns a mistress kept in a fourth-floor suite who, despairing in isolation, is said to have taken her own life and now lingers as a shadowy "Woman in Black." Students and staff have long traded reports of screams, cold spots, and objects flung from shelves on that upper floor. The history is solid; the spirits remain firmly in the realm of campus legend.
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