Flagler College Ponce de León Hall (Interior Tours)

Henry Flagler built the Hotel Ponce de León between 1885 and 1888 as a winter destination for wealthy Northerners, commissioning architects John Carrère and Thomas Hastings — then young and largely unproven — for what would become their first major project. The hotel was a technological showpiece: poured concrete construction, electrical systems by Thomas Edison, and lavish interiors by Louis Comfort Tiffany. It closed as a hotel in 1967.

What survived that closure is the reason to go inside. The interior tours through Ponce de León Hall — the building's name since it became the core of Flagler College in 1968 — put you in front of one of the largest intact collections of Tiffany work housed in a single building. The dining hall alone contains 79 original Tiffany stained glass windows, alongside Tiffany-designed mural paintings.

St. Augustine was founded in 1565, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement on the continent. Flagler understood what that history was worth, and built accordingly. The college preserved what he built. That chain of decisions is visible on the walls.