be a bit like Walt Disney announcing plans to build a second version of Disneyland in central Florida. The ensuing publicity set off the first of the great Florida real-estate speculation frenzies, and Flagler was deluged with offers from every quarter, most of which he brushed aside.
For while this was clearly business, it was business of a different sort. No degree of success in hotel management could ever provide an income rivaling what had come from oil.
During an 1887 interview granted to the
Jacksonville News Herald,
Flagler was asked to explain why on earth a man with a major interest in the most powerful company on earth would want to get into the hotel business. Flagler responded by telling a story he’d grown fond of—that of the elderly church deacon asked to explain a sudden, unaccountable bout of drunkenness. The deacon explained to his pastor that he had spent all his days hitherto in the Lord’s service, Flagler said, and now he was finally taking one for himself.
Similarly, Flagler told the reporter, “For the last fourteen or fifteen years I have devoted my time exclusively to business, and now I am pleasing myself.”
Later in the same interview Flagler elaborated: “[T]he Ponce de Leon is an altogether different affair. I want something to last all time to come. . . . I would hate to think that I am investing money that will not bring a return in the future. I will, however, have a hotel that suits me in every respect, and one that I can thoroughly enjoy, cost what it may.”
Those were fateful words, spoken at the beginning of a new career for Henry Flagler. It was a credo that would inform all the subsequent work of “the man who built Florida,” a two-decades process that would culminate in the “lunatic notion” to build a railroad across the sea.
It is doubtful that Flagler was looking that far ahead at the time, for the building of the Ponce de Leon was no easy task: at the time, malaria was an uncontrollable threat to workmen in St. Augustine’s hot and humid climate, and the amount of native rock that needed to be quarried from nearby public lands required a government waiver. It took nearly a year and a half to build the 540-room hotel, a process that Flagler himself oversaw, down to the opening of crated furniture alongside his crews.
One of the favorite stories retold by Flagler biographers concerns the builder’s predilection for dropping by the building site unannounced, to see how things were going. One day, however, Flagler, who was smoking a cigar, found his way blocked by a zealous guard. The guard pointed out one of the many “No Smoking” signs posted about and furthermore informed Flagler that there was to be no trespassing on the construction site. When Flagler protested that he was the owner, the guard was unfazed. There had been a good many Flaglers showing up all week, trying to get a look at what was going on, the guard announced, and he’d thrown every one of them out. Flagler was still trying to talk his way in, when one of the general contractors happened by and began to chastise the guard for not recognizing whom he was talking to. Flagler interceded, however, pleased by his workman’s steadfastness and efficiency.
All of Flagler’s careful oversight was to pay off, moreover. When the Ponce de Leon opened, the national press proclaimed it superior to hotels such as Chicago’s Palmer House and San Francisco’s Palace, and socialites flocked southward to experience this Babylon, where even the meanest room featured electric lights and had cost one thousand dollars to decorate.
Certainly part of Flagler’s success resulted from his insistence that no detail be overlooked in creating an atmosphere of splendor for his guests. But in retrospect, his timing was perfect as well.
It was, after all, the middle of what historians have termed the “Gilded Age” of American history, a period that stretched from the end of the Civil War until the Great Crash of
For while this was clearly business, it was business of a different sort. No degree of success in hotel management could ever provide an income rivaling what had come from oil.
During an 1887 interview granted to the
Jacksonville News Herald,
Flagler was asked to explain why on earth a man with a major interest in the most powerful company on earth would want to get into the hotel business. Flagler responded by telling a story he’d grown fond of—that of the elderly church deacon asked to explain a sudden, unaccountable bout of drunkenness. The deacon explained to his pastor that he had spent all his days hitherto in the Lord’s service, Flagler said, and now he was finally taking one for himself.
Similarly, Flagler told the reporter, “For the last fourteen or fifteen years I have devoted my time exclusively to business, and now I am pleasing myself.”
Later in the same interview Flagler elaborated: “[T]he Ponce de Leon is an altogether different affair. I want something to last all time to come. . . . I would hate to think that I am investing money that will not bring a return in the future. I will, however, have a hotel that suits me in every respect, and one that I can thoroughly enjoy, cost what it may.”
Those were fateful words, spoken at the beginning of a new career for Henry Flagler. It was a credo that would inform all the subsequent work of “the man who built Florida,” a two-decades process that would culminate in the “lunatic notion” to build a railroad across the sea.
It is doubtful that Flagler was looking that far ahead at the time, for the building of the Ponce de Leon was no easy task: at the time, malaria was an uncontrollable threat to workmen in St. Augustine’s hot and humid climate, and the amount of native rock that needed to be quarried from nearby public lands required a government waiver. It took nearly a year and a half to build the 540-room hotel, a process that Flagler himself oversaw, down to the opening of crated furniture alongside his crews.
One of the favorite stories retold by Flagler biographers concerns the builder’s predilection for dropping by the building site unannounced, to see how things were going. One day, however, Flagler, who was smoking a cigar, found his way blocked by a zealous guard. The guard pointed out one of the many “No Smoking” signs posted about and furthermore informed Flagler that there was to be no trespassing on the construction site. When Flagler protested that he was the owner, the guard was unfazed. There had been a good many Flaglers showing up all week, trying to get a look at what was going on, the guard announced, and he’d thrown every one of them out. Flagler was still trying to talk his way in, when one of the general contractors happened by and began to chastise the guard for not recognizing whom he was talking to. Flagler interceded, however, pleased by his workman’s steadfastness and efficiency.
All of Flagler’s careful oversight was to pay off, moreover. When the Ponce de Leon opened, the national press proclaimed it superior to hotels such as Chicago’s Palmer House and San Francisco’s Palace, and socialites flocked southward to experience this Babylon, where even the meanest room featured electric lights and had cost one thousand dollars to decorate.
Certainly part of Flagler’s success resulted from his insistence that no detail be overlooked in creating an atmosphere of splendor for his guests. But in retrospect, his timing was perfect as well.
It was, after all, the middle of what historians have termed the “Gilded Age” of American history, a period that stretched from the end of the Civil War until the Great Crash of
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