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Flagler's first hotel in St. Augustine was the Ponce de Leon, built in 1888, a masterpiece of Spanish Renaissance. The hotel was only opened January through March and residents had to pay for the entire season, no matter how long they actually stayed; they also had to be on the National Register in New York to stay here. Louis Comfort Tiffany designed some of the windows and Thomas Edison ran electricity through the hotel. However, electricity was so new that the guests who stayed here were afraid to turn the lights on! Flagler had to hire servants to switch the new-fangled lights on for the guests. Five presidents stayed in the hotel as well as Will Rogers and John D. Rockefeller. The building served as a hotel until 1967 when it was converted to Flagler College, a liberal arts institution initially a girls school but expanded to co-ed in 1971. Students conduct tours of the first floor and describe life when the structure was a hotel.
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