took profitable advantage of competition among railroads for large cargo
shipments. He was the transport negotiator whose prowess powered the
emergent empire of petroleum in North America.^7
At fifty-five (in ), his fortune made, Henry Flagler was privileged to
play among the eastern elite and to experiment—and invest, too—in ex-
pansion of the playgrounds. That was when he came to St. Augustine and,
almost enchanted, decided to make the place his own. In general, Florida’s
railroads remained frontierish, their track mileage barely exceeding Dela-
ware’s and Rhode Island’s. But Jacksonville and St. Augustine were served
well enough, with decent connections amounting to a de facto line down
the Atlantic coast all the way from New England. With appropriate accom-
modations, Flagler figured, the Ancient City might become the winter play-
ground for the fabled Newport, Rhode Island, summer crowd. The center-
piece of Flaglerized St. Augustine would be his spectacular Hotel Ponce de
Leon. The designers of the hotel included first the visionary Flagler him-
self. It must suit the high Gilded Age notion ofhaute resortwhile main-
taining somehow the local character, Flagler reasoned. There were also
two young French-trained architects from the prestigious New York firm
of McKim, Meade and White. Finally, though, the ruling inspiration of the
collaboration was not northern Spain—native region of Pedro Menéndez
de Avilés and other Spanish colonizers—but the Mediterranean. The Ponce
de Leon, built (amazingly) in only eighteen months, arose as a sprawling
‘‘Moorish’’ assembly of arcades, gardens, and towers resembling minarets.
How to construct such a marvel in a land still without bricks, however?
The young architects suggested poured concrete containing local sand and
shell. Nothing so large had ever been made of poured concrete, but Flagler,
his architects, and his general contractor gained confidence from a suc-
cessful experiment of smaller scale constructed only a few years before, just
across King Street from the hotel site. This was Villa Zorayda, a large pri-
vate residence built for another wealthy northern man. (Today it is a com-
mercial building.) So Flagler’s contractor set in motion the grand project.
First he brought to the Ponce de Leon site enormous loads of fill, so that
the ultimate structure would stand above flood-prone St. Augustine streets.
Such is ever the necessity in porous, low, coastal landscapes. And now—as
then, one is reminded—for every building that has risen on such terrain,
there is a comparable hole somewhere in inland Florida or beyond. The
Ponce de Leon opened in , the largest poured concrete structure on
earth, not only a marvel for the eye but a lavishly modern jewel. Electrically
powered throughout, the Ponce de Leon was also supplied with healthful