Flagler College St Augustine: Jewelled Historical Spectacle and Working College

Flagler College St Augustine: Study The Glittering Past or Study Business at this Great Institution

What is now Flagler College St Augustine was originally built as an opulent resort for extremely wealthy guests. You had to be on the New York Social Register just to be allowed to have a room there.

Now that’s EXCLUSIVE!

Every suite was different and each was utterly unique. If you held a suite for the 90 days of the year the hotel was open, you paid for the entire 90 days – whether you stayed for 90 days or one! OUCH!

All the interior decoration was designed by Charles Lewis Tiffany. The Tiffany glass that still graces the refectory alone is now valued at $30,000,000. Dining in true style is still on the menu at Flagler College St Augustine!

In the true spirit of innovation, Henry Flagler fitted the whole building with the new-fangled electric lights that were really brand new when the hotel was built.

Unfortunately, the guests were too scared to touch the magical new light switches!!

Flagler solved that problem by employing one person to stand by each and every switch in the building just to turn it on or off. That’s the job for me!

You can take a guided tour of this gem of St Augustine for the miserly sum of just $7.00 nowadays, which is a just bit cheaper than the price of renting a suite in the early days!

Flagler College Today
Well the days of the New York Upper Crust coming to sun themselves at Flagler College, St Augustine may be over (sad sigh….) but the building has not been allowed to stand idle! Flagler College St Augustine

Henry Flagler was a man of great innovation and an extremely shrewd businessman. It is very fitting then that his old resort should have been turned into a College of Business and the Liberal Arts.

Ranked as one of the top ten most beautiful college campuses in America, the Flagler College offers a program of business and other courses to a very select group of about 2,000 undergraduate students (60% girls and only 40% boys – lucky boys!).

Give the lads a chance – they’ve only been allowed to be students since 1971! Before that date Flagler was a girls only college.

Want a sneak preview of the sort of place Flagler College St Augustine is? Well here are a few virtual mini-tours to give you a better idea.

With its fees held down to around $12,000 a year plus another $6,300 for room and board, Flagler must be a very popular college. That sounds like a bargain to me!

If you are actually looking for a great college and would like to add Flagler College St Augustine to your list of possible schools, you probably ought to go over and have a look at their catalogue and check things out.

When we were at Flagler College we were taken back to our college days and started dreaming about how we could have been multi-millionaire industrialists like Henry Flagler if we had just come to St Augustine to study business.

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Religious Attractions in St Augustine Florida

Religious Attractions To Wow The Whole Family. St Augustine’s Incredible Religious History is Set In Stone.

When it comes to religious attractions, St Augustine, Florida is unmatched for sheer historical significance anywhere in America.

Of course, all things are relative! My local parish church in England was built in the 14th century and York Minster was an established administrative centre before William the Conqueror ever heard of England!

But in terms of the “New World”, St Augustine really marks the beginning of things.

The Menendez Cross
When Pedro Menendez arrived at the shores of St Augustine Florida, one of the first things he did was to hold a service of thanksgiving and dedication. It was the first ever Roman Catholic Mass held on Floridian soil and the site is now marked by a 208ft high cross.

The cross is a very imposing and powerful structure during the day. At night, though, it is absolutely majestic. If you want somewhere for a great evening visit, this could be the place to do it.

There is not much activity going on, but a quiet stroll through the grounds in the evening to the accompaniment of the chirruping cicadas with this huge cross in the background is one of the most spiritual experiences you will ever have – whether you are Catholic or not.

The great cross (above) is surrounded by a huge complex of gardens, shrines, chapels and archaeological excavations. It is all very interesting and extremely tranquil.

If you want to get the best out of your visit to this beautiful religious attraction, the best way to do it is to have a look at the online ‘walking tour’ of the mission.

The Walking Tour includes lots of historical information and plenty of devotional materials you might like to use if your visit has a spiritual dimension to it.

Flagler Memorial Church
Moving into the modern era, in fact to the modern expansion and development of the town under Henry Flagler and a few other enterprising gentlemen in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, we see a very different approach to religious observance!

None of the leisured Spanish approach to developing and venerating a shrine over centuries here! No, this is a quintessentially American, “fly by the seat of your pants” approach to building a future religious attraction for St Augustine.

In 1889, Henry Flagler’s daughter, Jenny-Louise, died in childbirth along with her newborn daughter.

Flagler decided that he wanted to commemorate the first anniversary of her death in a brand new church so he had one built!

Yes, the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church was built in just ONE YEAR! Flagler had workmen working 24 hours a day for the entire year (actually, it only took them 361 days!).

He employed 1,000 men to work 12 hours a day either on day shifts or night shifts for the entire period and he had his one year anniversary memorial service right on time.

Henry Flagler was a man of means you know!

Both of these attractions can be investigated at your leisure and both are at or close to stops on the trolley tours that make all St Augustine’s religious attractions – and all the others – easy to reach.

Just one word of warning: If you plan to drive into St Augustine, prepare to walk a long way from the available parking to all the main attractions. Personally, I always plan to use a trolley service because they all provide free parking if you need it.

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Castillo De San Marcos National Monument A Historical Spectacle For Today

The Castillo De San Marcos National Monument – also known as St Augustine Fort – is well worth a visit.

The Castillo De San Marcos National Monument is another great stop on the Red Train Tour (and the other St Augustine trolley tours).

At ‘The Fort’ we were just in time to see one of their many cannons being fired by men in 17th Century Spanish Colonial Uniform from about 1740.

It was a spectacle you shouldn’t miss!

In fact, I liked it so much I am breaking my usual rules and adding a You Tube video of it here.

Just make sure you follow the Sergeant’s orders to cover your ears at the right moment because it is LOUD! (Of course you could just turn the sound down – but where’s the fun in that?)

The Castillo De San Marcos National Monument was built by the Spanish in that era when everybody was fighting over the New World and Pirates regularly attacked Florida’s coast (and the English, the Portuguese and a few others).

Of course the Spanish thought they owned the place and the rest just wanted to own it so there was a pretty good reason to build a fort or two for defense purposes.

But you can probably see from this picture that they didn’t just use anything to build it. The Castillo De San Marcos National Monument – before it was a national monument of course – was built to last using over 500,000 blocks of coquina.

This is strange stuff!

It is a compound of phosphate, sea shells and some other bits and pieces. The main thing about its use in construction is that it is soft.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t last – it means it absorbs the impact of projectile objects (like cannonballs) rather then breaking and shattering like stone would.

As well as that it is very quick and easy to work with.

When ships came and bombarded the fort they would spend all day at it with no significant effect.

Then, when the firing stopped, the Spanish would run out under cover of darkness and fill in any gaps or holes in the walls (and gather up a few spare cannonballs to fire back the next day!) and be ready for action again in the morning.

Boy, those Spaniards really knew what they were doing!

They spent 23 years building that fort but it has never been taken in battle so it seems to have been worth the time.

The whole feeling of the Castillo De San Marcos National Monument is one of tremendous historical significance combined with the “Wow” factor. You spend all your time there looking at things and saying “WOW! Did you see this?”

The cannon are not only EVERYWHERE they are also great places for photo calls and they have lots of information about the technicals of cannon (which I couldn’t follow because I’m only a girl).

If you are in St Augustine, do make sure you go to the Castillo De San Marcos National Monument – you’ll have a ball especially if you can arrange to catch one of their live demonstrations.

The picture below gives you all the price and opening details from Summer 2007.

Have a great visit!

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The Oldest Wooden School House in America

The Oldest Wooden School House in America is in St Augustine – Why Not Flydrive Back To Tom Brown’s Schooldays?

The oldest wooden school house in America is sitting right in St George Street, St Augustine waiting for class to get back in session for you. The bell is ringing and it’s definitely time you got back into your shorts and cap and went and learned something!

It was in the Oldest Wooden School House that we talked about how nice it would have been to have had kids with us so that we could have tortured them with stories about “when I was at school……”.

Actually, not many horror stories would have been necessary since most of the things I still have nightmares about were displayed for the kiddiwinks to see for themselves.

A boy sits in a corner wearing the pointy “Dunce Cap”. Wooden paddles of all shapes and sizes decorate the walls. Incomprehensible algebra books lie open on desks. If they had had a school cane hanging up somewhere I think I might have passed out!

Now before you say anything – yes, I know I am showing my age here. But frankly, I don’t much care. This place had me more scared than the Ghost Walk in the evening!

But this is the joy of a Florida Flydrive. You can go somewhere, see something and if it terrifies you, you can drive away!

Outside of the main old school house building is a small compound with a few outbuildings. The kitchen is as absolutely original as the Oldest Wooden School House itself.

It even has traces of the original whitewash on the outside boards. They don’t make whitewash like they used to you know!

The compound behind the old school house itself is full of lush vegetation – tropical stuff like banana palms that give outstanding shade and keep the whole area cool and shady even in the hottest summer weather.

If you are a bit squeamish of wildlife though, you might not want to sit out here too long as there seem to be an unusually large number of small but fat-looking lizards enjoying the cool as well as you.

The Oldest Wooden School House is a small but interesting attraction.

Adults will have fun just remembering the “good old days”;

Engineers will have apoplexy inspecting the heavy iron chains that hold the whole structure down in high winds;
Kids will love ringing the school bell and laughing at how primitive schools used to be – not to mention taking photos of themselves sitting in the outhouse!

Something for everyone there then!

Admission:

Adults $3.00;
Over 55 yrs $2.50
Ages 6 – 12 $2.00;
Five or Under FREE

Opening Hours:

9-5 every day except Christmas Day.
Some days have extended hours – mostly weekends.
Call for details: (888) 653-7245

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