I was staying at the charming Penny Farthing Inn, a lovely bed and breakfast just at the edge of the historic district in St. Augustine. From there, it was an easy walk to see most of the city’s highlights, from its hulking fortress to its quirky museums to great restaurants like Casa Reina and Mojo BBQ.

A little sapped from the large number of tourists heavily concentrated along St. George Street and the unrelenting heat and humidity, I slowly made my way to the trio of old hotels framing a green square in the heart of the historic district. One, Casa Monica, opened in 1888, is one of the oldest hotels in the United States and is still functioning as such (despite a blip as a courthouse and government offices before reverting back to accommodations). The second, the Hotel Alcazar, is now home to shops, City Hall, and the eclectic Lightner Museum. But it was the third that really intrigued me.

Flagler College’s campus buildings can be found around the historic district, but its heart is the main building, the former Ponce de Leon Hotel. One look at it and I fell in love, and I immediately needed to see more. Fortunately, the college offers tours to the general public, so even if you’re not a high school graduate interested in attending this liberal arts college, you can get a good look inside the historic structure.

I had some free time before the tour began, so I drank in all the details and history of this gorgeous, sprawling building. The Ponce de Leon Hotel was the brainchild of Henry Flagler, a Gilded Age industrialist, entrepreneur, railroad pioneer, co-founder (along with John D. Rockefeller), of Standard Oil, and the man who was responsible for constructing the railway that ran from the tip of southern Florida all the way to Key West, island hopping along the way, until the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 destroyed it; the railway was never rebuilt, but parts of U.S. Route 1 now make use of the rail’s roadbed and bridges that survived as one of the world’s best drives. He chose the fledgling New York–based architectural firm Carrère and Hastings to construct the hotel to lure the wealthy elite. It was their first commission, and their éclat here would catapult them into becoming one of the most successful, renowned, and prestigious firms in the United States. After about two years of construction, the first of Flagler’s luxury resorts along Florida’s east coast was completed in 1888. The massive Spanish Renaissance–style hotel was the first of its kind to be constructed entirely of poured concrete, and it was one of the first buildings in the United States to be wired for electricity right from the start, generated by the largest incandescent lighting plant in the world that powered 4,000 lights.

I roamed around the exterior, admiring the spectacular display of towers, arches, red tile roofs, chimneys, dormer windows, balconies, loggias and arcades, corbels, and terra-cotta details. I wondered what it would have been like to stay here, in one of the posh hotel’s 540 rooms, at a time when, if you were ensconcing yourself here for the season, you paid for your room upon arrival—$4,000 in cash. Partially cannibalized by Flagler’s own success at building his railroads and drawing patrons farther south, to West Palm Beach and Miami; partially disrupted by the Great Depression; and usurped as a Coast Guard training center for 1,500 soldiers during World War II, the hotel eventually closed in 1967. The following year, it became the centerpiece of the new Flagler College, originally a women’s college, offering a degree in educating the deaf. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

I passed by the statue of Flagler between the two columns with lion (de León) heads at the main entrance, through the gates below the welcoming arch with the outrageously ornate cornice, and into the beautiful courtyard, where the one-hour tour was about to begin. We gathered around the fountain with the terra-cotta frogs and turtles, modeled after one in the cloister of an Italian cathedral. And although the entire complex is unmistakably Spanish in style, if one were to view the courtyard from above, the pathways make up a Celtic cross.

The tour guide, an affable member of the college’s senior class, welcomed us to the college and to Ponce de Leon Hall, now a residence hall for 480 incoming first-year students. (I immediately recalled, with regret, my hideous freshman dorm, a two-story box with zero character.) During his introductory remarks, he pointed to the prominent towers that once held 8,000 gallons of water and today provide an hourly musical interlude. He also directed us to the gargoyles poking into the courtyard, noting that they never functioned as waterspouts, as expected, but rather as light fixtures. He then led us under the entrance arch, with each letter of de Leon’s name in a shield and the spandrel bedecked with seashells, blue and maroon opaque smalti glass, and yellow ceramic clay.

We entered the hall through wood doors, following in the footsteps of such former luminaries as Grover Cleveland, Babe Ruth, Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and a teenage John F. Kennedy. If the outside of the building and the courtyard with its palm trees and tropical plants weren’t enough to awe me, the lobby completely amazed me. We clustered in the rotunda, where we were welcomed by gorgeous woodwork, wainscoting of North African pink marble, ornate lighting fixtures, and the grand staircase with stained-glass windows. We stood under the 68’ domed ceiling supported by eight hand-carved oak caryatids, each slightly different from one another. Murals covered with 23K gold leaf, including representations of the four elements, enrich the walls above.

Beneath us, the wonderfully intricate mosaic floor is the product of 50 men laying the tiles 24 hours a day for months—and contains a little secret. Flagler was a fairly religious man who believed no one was infallible and nothing was perfect except for what God made, so he deliberately introduced an “error” into the design, an imperceptible irregularity you’d never notice if someone didn’t point it out—of the many quartets of black tiles, just one has three black tiles and one white.

We moved on into the massive Flagler Room, originally serving as the Women’s Grand Parlor. It’s a luxurious space with French Renaissance décor, complete with 11 Austrian crystal chandeliers designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, a clock containing the largest piece of intact white onyx in the Western Hemisphere and crafted by Thomas Edison, original hotel furniture and art, magnificent wall panels, columns, detailed plaster carvings, and a ceiling painted the same shade of blue you’ll see on Tiffany shopping bags and boxes.

The tour concluded in the cavernous, oval, 3½-story dining room, taking up a whopping 14,212 square feet. Once the scene of elaborate meals for 300 of the hotel’s upper-crust clientele, where each table had its own waiter for the duration of their stay, this room is now the college’s dining hall. I imagined the offerings for today’s college students are a little different from the menu during the room’s heyday—including, for instance, Blue Point oysters, boiled sheepshead with egg sauce, roast capon with chestnut stuffing, rice croquettes with brandy sauce, and queen pudding with cream sauce. But I also imagined that even a cheeseburger and fries would taste better than usual in this extraordinary setting.

At either end of the main section, on the second level, semicircular minstrel lofts accommodated the musicians who entertained the diners below so that there was never a moment of awkward silence in between their courses. Seventy-nine Tiffany stained-glass windows—more here, in one location, than anywhere else in the world—feature clear and colored glass in geometric patterns and filigree designs. Murals on the 48’ barrel-vaulted ceiling feature zodiac symbols, 35 Spanish coats of arms, allegorical females representing the seasons, and a pictogram that depicts the history of Florida through important dates and historic figures.

Our student guide allowed us to linger here for a while, to take note of all the details that revealed themselves the longer I gaped—the murals of Spanish galleons at full mast, nymphs holding musical instruments, and cherubs frolicking above paneled walls and doors; the fluted Corinthian columns; the circular space off to the side illuminated by large windows. I remained there until we were ushered out, reflecting on the atrocious dining space of the college where I currently work and secretly dreaming of what it would be like to be a Flagler employee instead.

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