This book is a sympathetic, personal biography of Henry M. Flagler during the years after he left Standard Oil to pursue his second career as builder of Florida. This is also a narrative history of the transformation of St. Augustine, Florida, from a remote village on the Southern frontier of America into a modern city. However, the narrative expands beyond St. Augustine to follow the extension of Flagler's railroad and hotel empire down the East Coast of Florida to Palm Beach, Miami, and, ultimately, Key West. This book tells the stories of a variety of people whose lives touched Henry M. Fla ... More

This book is a sympathetic, personal biography of Henry M. Flagler during the years after he left Standard Oil to pursue his second career as builder of Florida. This is also a narrative history of the transformation of St. Augustine, Florida, from a remote village on the Southern frontier of America into a modern city. However, the narrative expands beyond St. Augustine to follow the extension of Flagler's railroad and hotel empire down the East Coast of Florida to Palm Beach, Miami, and, ultimately, Key West. This book tells the stories of a variety of people whose lives touched Henry M. Flagler: the women who wrote guide books to promote tourism, the architects who designed his hotels, the artists who decorated the hotels, the black hotel waiters (and baseball players), the people who wrote society columns for the newspapers, employees of the hotels and railroads, Flagler's friends and relatives, and, of course, the rich and famous guests who stayed in Flagler's hotels. John D. Rockefeller makes several appearances that are not mentioned in earlier Flagler biographies. This, the first biography of Henry M. Flagler to appear in a quarter century, achieves a level of personal detail not reached in earlier books on Flagler during his Florida years. It is based upon years of research by a historian who spent his career teaching at Flagler College, which today occupies the magnificent halls of Flagler's former Hotel Ponce de Leon.