Flagler College Tour

Tours are offered only twice a day, but it’s worth making time to take it. Not only does your money go back to the college, but the guides are knowledgeable and friendly. Maya was great, and I would recommend this tour as a must see for any St. Augustine trip. Groups can be a bit big because the tours are only offered twice l, bit this did not interfere too much with enjoying the beautiful and historic nature of the college.

We decided to jump off of the trolley to tour this former luxury hotel of the Flagler era, now college. Our tour was full, loaded with tourists, and led by an enthusiastic student. Some of the facts were slightly delivered slant, in our opinion, and «back in the day» was uttered far too frequently for my taste, but overall, the chap did a good job. It’s worth it to see all of the gorgeous Tiffany windows. The Rotunda is stunning. The students humbly dine where the elite guests used to dine. They seem immune to the former grandeur and were mostly dining solo, staring into laptops, with mobile devices nearby. We were there mid-​afternoon. It is my hope that at true mealtime, they dine in groups, companionably.

Happened to stumble across this tour, I saw the gorgeous building and thought I might wander into the courtyard without bothering anyone, low and behold they have tours of the building twice daily at 10 am and 2 pm, $ 10 for an adult ticket.
The building itself is the former Ponce de Leon Hotel, just a magnificent structure built in 1887 with «no expense spared» to make it fashionable for the Victorian rich who came for the season. Drop-​dead gorgeous Tiffany windows, hand-​carved woodwork and statuary throughout, and the historic dining hall that is now a dining hall for the female freshmen dorm, wow in tremendous shape after restoration and lovingly treated by the students. The tour is led by students and goes places you can not go otherwise, primarily into the dining hall and grand parlor.
My favorites — electrical designs and the clock by Edison no less. An Edison clock has IIII instead of IV in the roman numerals, who knew? Also, the courtyard fountain that is a functional sundial (with frog fountains marking the numbers).
The tour is about an hour, and perfect for a rainy day — or any day — to combine with a visit to the Flagler Museum just across King Street.

How can anyone in St. Augustine pass by this magnificent landmark and not want to take the time to walk around the grounds and through the building? It is so well maintained, so distinctive and so vibrant that it is truly a pleasure to be able to visit, tour and more fully appreciate the history of the former Ponce de Leon that is now known as Flagler CollegeHotel .
I have always admired the architecture and beauty of the former Tampa Bay Hotel that is also a college campus, the University of Tampa. Hate to say it but, when it comes to Flagler, there is no comparison. Built by railroad magnate Henry M. Flagler in 1888, it is an older and more opulent structure than the circa 1891 Tampa Bay Hotel that Henry B. Plant developed.
Both are fully functioning college campuses that have kept pace with their respective academic demands by adding buildings and upgrading and improving in whatever ways they needed to better serve their student bodies. But both have fortunately remained faithful to their original grandeur as upscale resorts.
The guided tour was a pleasant and nicely paced way to really grasp what went into creating this building, from the Tiffany stained glass windows in the dining room to the handcrafted Austrian crystal chandeliers in the Women’s Grand Parlor. Some of these areas included in the tour are not open to the general public and may even be off limits to the college students attending classes here so the time and money the tour requires are both well spent.
Wandering through the lobby and courtyard I could not help but wonder what it was like when this luxury resort was at its height of popularity or how it feels to begin a college career here and realize how fortunate it is that this building still so grandly stands.

Our tour guide, Carson was excellent. Very informative & interesting. We opted for the morning tour at 10am (the later one starts at 2pm). There was a lot of confusion at first, we were sent to the security office because .no one knew where the tour was meeting initially. The security office didn’t have a clue either so we started asking random students and strangers. Meet at the gift shop — they will ask to trade in your vouchers and or purchase tickets. My family & I felt this was well worth the time & money. Only bad thing was that the day we arrived, they were re-​painting the women’s bathroom and the closest bathroom was very far away

The 50 minutes or so you’ll spend on the Flagler College Tour (the one open to the public, not for students touring the college) is great. You’ll learn a fantastic amount of history about the old hotel and Flagler’s legacy plus you’ll get to see parts of the auditorium and Women’s lounge that are closed off to the general public. The Tiffany stained glass windows and Tiffany carved chairs (yes, they did make chairs) and their imitations are definitely worth the price of admission. Our precocious tour guide himself was worth the short wait for the tour.
AND, if you want to see the areas of the college that are otherwise not accessible, take a tour as a «prospective student» or as parents of a prospective student. The buildings other than the auditorium are just as lovely and definitely worth the time you’ll spend. Plus, Flagler is a good buy, not the «great college» that some of the other rreviewers note (and I was in the business of college admissions for two decades so I know my schools), but this recent addition to private colleges in the South does a great job for relatively little in educating its students. This is a school with a limited mission that does its job well.