“From the tall spires of the Ponce de Leon Hotel and the
Cathedral of St. Augustine to street pavers on the ground,
Graham offers us a detailed account of Henry Flagler’s
impact on St. Augustine in this genially written
book.”—Susan Parker, director, St. Augustine Historical
Society
“With verve and wit, Graham makes St. Augustine and a whole
cast of historic characters come alive.”—Susan R. Braden,
author of The Architecture of Leisure
“You can smell the orange blossoms, twirl around the
ballroom floors, envy the gowns at the charity balls, revel
in the gossip about the rich and famous, suffer with the
poor and the disenfranchised, and thrill to the first blaze
of electrical lights, the first automobiles and ‘hard’
roads, and the new sport of golf.”—Elsbeth K. Gordon,
author of Heart and Soul of Florida
In the late 1800s, Henry Morrison Flagler walked away from
Standard Oil, leaving the enormously successful company in
the hands of John D. Rockefeller while he headed to Florida
to pursue other interests. Flagler’s new venture would lead
him to completely restructure the sleepy town of St.
Augustine and transform Florida’s entire east coast.
This monumental biography tells the story of how one of the
wealthiest men in America spared no expense to turn the
country’s “Oldest City” into a highly desirable vacation
destination for the rich. Upon arrival, Flagler found
accommodations in St. Augustine to be inferior, so he set
out to build the opulent Ponce de Leon Hotel, and thus
began his endeavor to attract wealthy travelers to the
small southern city. He funded hospitals and churches and
improved streets and parks. He constructed railroads in
remote areas where men feared to tread and erected palatial
hotels on swampland. The rich and famous flocked to
Flagler’s invented paradise. And he had the vision to
stretch his new railroad southward, establishing hotels and
accommodations along the way.
In tracing Flagler’s second career, Thomas Graham reveals
much about the inner life of the former oil magnate and the
demons that drove him to expand a coastal empire that
eventually encompassed Palm Beach, Miami, Key West, and
finally Nassau. Graham also gives voice to the individuals
that history has forgotten: the women who wrote tourist
books, the artists who decorated the hotels, the black
servants who waited tables, and the journalists who penned
society columns for the newspapers.
Arguably no man did more to make over a city—or a
state—than Flagler. Almost single-handedly, he transformed
Florida from a remote frontier into the winter playground
of America’s elite. Filled with fascinating details that
bring the Gilded Age to life, Mr. Flagler’s St.
Augustine provides an authoritative look at an
intriguing man and a captivating time in American history.