Saint Augustine Fire of 1914

It was first reported by a patrolman named S A McCormick who saw flames from a second floor window while walking his late night beat shortly after 1:00am.

[2] Hotel guests fled neighboring structures in their night clothes into a blaze of light, visible from the outskirts of the city.

Clothing, furniture, and belongings rescued from the fire were heaped on the green in front of Fort Marion and on the Plaza, which the owners tried to sort out for days.

Alice Smith of Amherst, Nova Scotia,[4] leapt from the third floor of the Florida House and was taken to a hospital with a broken back.

It was advertised in Elias Nason's 1884 Chapins Hand Book of Saint Augustine as featuring 131 large rooms, elegant furnishings, good ventilation, and gas lights.

The proprietor was Bartola Genovar, who lost his original Opera House at Charlotte Street and Cuna to a previous fire.

After 1914, the Monson was replaced by a masonry structure that opened on January 5, 1915, and remained a fixture on Saint Augustine's bay front until 1960.

The Vedder Museum was located on Bay Street at the corner of Treasury and was called "the oldest hotel in America" in a newspaper account of the fire.