Henry Flagler was 83 years old when he fell down the stairs at Whitehall, his mansion in Palm Beach. Fatally wounded, he died on May 20, 1913, and was eventually laid to rest in a mausoleum at the Memorial Presbyterian Church. Less than three years later, the sightings began.
It started near the railway depot on Malaga Street, where the St. Augustine Fire Department stands today. Flagler was seen standing in a small park, watching the railroad cars of his East Coast Railway roll by. For 45 years the sightings were contained to the park, but in 1961 he was seen standing on the grounds of the Lightner Museum, which had at one time been Flagler’s famed Alcazar Hotel. After the first class of Flagler College students arrived in 1968 it was only a few short years before Henry Flagler made his presence known. The Ponce de Leon Hotel had been the crown jewel of his St. Augustine hotels, and sightings of Flagler have been frequent there since 1971. While the visage of College’s namesake standing in the shadows of the old hotel became almost commonplace, he began to appear more recently in other parts of the state. In 2005 sightings were reported in Key West, near a spot that was once the terminus of the Florida Overseas Railroad, the magnum opus of Flagler’s railroad career that spanned 128 miles to connect Key West to peninsular Florida. Then, Flagler appeared before the eyes of 200 people on the morning of December 12, 2010 in Palm Beach, less than half a mile away from the fateful staircase at Whitehall. For someone resigned to eternal rest in a mausoleum, Flagler sure seems to cover a lot of ground.
But let me take a step back, lest I misrepresent the situation. This isn’t a ghost story. The sightings I referred to are of a life-size bronze statue of Henry Flagler that has migrated around town a bit, from Station Park on Malaga St., to the Lightner gardens, to the entrance of Flagler College. That statue was actually commissioned in 1902, unbeknownst to Flagler, by a purchasing agent on a trip to Florence. Flagler never saw the statue, but it made a fitting memorial when it was put on display in Station Park amid fanfare on the anniversary of his 86th birthday. Two bronze copies were made from this statue, and those account for the sightings in Key West and Palm Beach.
Flagler Statue (click and drag to navigate)
by St. Augustine Time Travelers Society
on Sketchfab
You would be hard-pressed to find a better personification of the term “Tycoon” than in Henry Flagler. He co-founded Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller (who is perhaps best known for being the namesake of both a buttery oyster dish and a seasonal ice skating rink), and went on to be a successful railroad magnate and hotelier, transforming the eastern coast of Florida with development and droves of beau monde tourists from the North. Think of him as a Victorian-era King Midas. The statue captures his personal style, which he shares with the mascot for the board game “Monopoly” (which is fitting, because Standard Oil held a monopoly over the oil/kerosene industry in the US for a while). When the Flagler statue was dedicated in St. Augustine on January 2, 1916 a speech was given that included this line: “As long as this statue shall stand those who behold it [and] contemplate its surroundings will be impressed by his public spirit, his enterprise and the wonderful grasp of industrial possibilities which were the elements of his being.” 100 years later, and still standing.
