Casa Monica Hotel

The hotel was opened in 1888 by Franklin W. Smith, a notable Victorian architecture enthusiast and social reformer who earned a place in Florida history for interesting Henry Flagler in investing in the state.

The original exterior finish was natural, leaving horizontal pour marks visible, and matching other grand Flagler era structures in downtown St. Augustine.

His own winter home, Villa Zorayda, just a block to the west, was the first Moorish Revival building in St. Augustine.

In 1964 the lobby of the then-vacant hotel was used to house police dogs that were used against civil rights demonstrators during the mass campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Robert Hayling, see St. Augustine movement.

A notable feature of the courthouse were murals by the artist Hugo Ohlms, whose distinctive work was also featured in the nearby Catholic Cathedral and at the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge (another civil rights landmark, where the arrest of Mrs. Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, while trying to be served in a racially integrated group, made national headlines in 1964).

Richard Kessler and architect Howard Davis decided to keep the historic Moorish Revival style of the hotel.

Today the Casa Monica Hotel operates as part of the Kessler Collection headquartered in Orlando, Florida.