Who really built St. Augustine

Meet Franklin Smith

Everyone talks about Henry Flagler as a great man who transformed St. Augustine and with his railroad opened the East coast of Florida. That may be true, but I post that his accomplishments rests on the shoulders of an even greater man who transformed architecture for the world! A man cut from an entirely different cloth than the Robber Baron Flagler, whose vision for a national museum of the history of art, brought him to St. Augustine Florida. Meet Franklin Smith, the gentleman who built the Villa Zorayda on King Street and reinvented poured concrete construction, bringing it from the ancient world to today’s use in skyscrapers, Highway overpasses and foundations of almost every home in the world…just like the foundations of the great pyramids of Egypt!

Franklin grew up on Beacon Hill in Boston from a notable family, his grandfather was president of Harvard University, and his father was the tax collector for the port of Boston. Wealthy and well educated, he went across to Europe and North Africa several times. There he was enchanted by the architecture and art of the ancient world; there his vision of a national museum grew. Back in Boston, he went into business as a hardware merchant. He helped found the YMCA, was an early abolitionist and organizer of the Republican party. Indeed, he spent his honeymoon in Washington at Lincoln’s inauguration.

Mr. Franklin Smith, in partnership with his brother, made a fortune supplying the union army and navy. But he was a moral Baptist who was aghast at the graft and corruption in the bidding process, especially with the navy. He published a pamphlet exposing this corruption, naming names and causing Congress to open an investigation into the navy itself. The navy then arrested him and threw him and his brother into the brig. They then gathered up all his business records and padlocked the doors of his warehouse! Charging him with fraud of between $100 and $200 dollars of a total of $1,500,000 in contracts. Due to martial law during wartime, he was held without bond and due process. It took the actions of President Lincoln to set aside this judgement.

After restoring his business and good name, he once again headed to Europe to pursue his dream of a national museum of art and architecture. This dream brought him to St. Augustine; while visiting his wife’s family he started his experiments with poured concrete. Florida lacking appropriate stone, did have ample supply of sand and seashells. He built himself a winter home on King Street. Inspired by the Moorish Alhambra he loved so well. Franklin poured layer by layer of seashells to create his sandcastle with iron reinforcement and imported tiles. It still stands as the Villa Zorayda 83 King Street, one of the most interesting places to visit in the city.

Franklin’s friendship with Mr. Flagler started with his inviting him and his second wife to stay in his house. So impressed was Flagler that he wanted to build his vision of “The Newport of the South” with poured concrete under Franklin’s supervision. He was invited to invest in Flagler’s Ponce De Leon hotel, but he declined, perhaps because he didn’t trust Flagler or couldn’t raise the money. I suspect that it was the first because Flagler went way over budget and Franklin built his own designs, the Casa Monica. This was his grandest palace yet. The confection of Moorish architecture stood like a mirage in the dusty town, like a giant’s sandcastle rose above the oaks and the small shacks and houses in the surrounding orange grove. A sultan’s dream realized in St. Augustine.