Mr. Flagler’s St. Augustine

4. Coming to Florida, 1883–1885

42 4 ∑ Coming to Florida, 1883–1885 Mr. Flagler dreamed dreams. —Newspaper editor Frank Harris, May 1913 In December 1883 Henry and Alice Flagler traveled to Florida accompanied by John D.and Laura Rockefeller, taking trains southward to the end of the line in Jacksonville. At the station they were greeted by Dr. Andrew Anderson of St. Augustine. When Flagler had first met Anderson is not known, but they may have been introduced sometime earlier in New York. Flagler once wrote that the mother of one of his best friends in New York had been a close friend of Clarissa Anderson .1 In any case, Flagler and Anderson would soon become warm friends. As Flagler explained in a letter written a few years later: “Dr. Anderson is a particular friend of mine. He is a bachelor. A little slow to get acquainted with but a down right good fellow in every sense of the word.” Years later James Ingraham, one of Flagler’s chief lieutenants, would write, “Perhaps no one possessed Mr. Flagler’s entire confidence and esteem to a greater extent than Dr. Anderson.”2 At the Jacksonville docks Anderson escorted the party on board the Sylvan Glen, one of the crack steamers of the DeBary-Baya “Fast Line.” A single-stack side-wheeler, the Sylvan Glen, with its sleek battlecruiser hull, made the run upriver to Palatka and back to Jacksonville every day. EvidentlytheNewYorkersstoppedatGreenCoveSpringsalongtheway;perhaps they spent a night at the new, high-toned Magnolia Springs Hotel. We know the Rockefeller-Flagler party made a stopover somewhere along the St. Johns River because they took passage on the DeBary-Baya’s other elite steamer, the John Sylvester, to complete their run upriver to Tocoi. From there they endured the slow chug to St. Augustine over the St. Johns Railroad. Coming to Florida, 1883–1885 · 43 That evening around the fireplace of Anderson’s modest cottage, Rockefeller, Flagler, and Anderson were joined by George Lorillard, who came over from his villa on St. George Street for a conversation that likely touched upon St. Augustine ’s prospects for the future. Possibly the Rockefellers and Flaglers, or just the Flaglers, spent a while as Anderson’s guests. The Flaglers would remain in St. Augustine for the better part of the season, perhaps because weather reports coming in from New York told of frigid, miserable storms in the North. Not until March did they return home.3 The next winter Flagler came back to St. Augustine. His impulse derived from the long-established motive of strangers who came there: a desire to recover his health. Years later Flagler’s cousin John H.Flagler, president of the Cottonseed Oil Company, took credit for sending Henry Flagler to Florida. He explained that his cousin badly needed a rest, and only for this reason was John able to persuade him, reluctantly, to abandon his business in New York City to seek recuperation in Florida.4 Henry Flagler himself told a newspaper reporter that he decided to return “because my liver became disordered.”5 In his extended interview with Edwin Lefevre,givenyearsafterthefact,Flaglersaidinpassingthathewasaccompanied by his daughter Jennie Louise, who was also not well.6 Flagler’s doctor had advised him to go to St. Augustine, but Flagler’s earlier experiences with the town’s second-rate lodging and hotel food made him hesitant . However, a new resort hotel had just opened in St. Augustine, and Flagler decided he would risk another visit to the Oldest City. He wired ahead for reservations , but he was obliged to stay in Jacksonville, probably at the St. James, until February 27 since he could not get rooms in St. Augustine until then. On this visit the final leg of the trip would be easier because a new railroad had been built directly linking Jacksonville and St. Augustine.7 Flagler and Ida Alice (and perhaps Harry and Jennie Louise, too) stayed at the new San Marco Hotel, which stood just inland from Fort Marion and enjoyed viewsofthefort,thetown,andtheplacidwatersofMatanzasBay.TheSanMarco had become St. Augustine’s new landmark, its white walls and red trim visible from miles away looming over the rooftops of the town. It stood five stories tall, topped with three mansard-roofed towers. Built of longleaf pine harvested in the surrounding flatlands, it offered what was called “solidly fashionable” accommodation in a “homelike” atmosphere. Its interior walls and ceilings were painted in light colors, with no decorative cornice work or other fancy ornamentation and only commonplace framed pictures hanging...