Franklin W. Smith, a Boston hardware merchant turned architecture enthusiast and abolitionist, bought this land from Henry Flagler in 1887 and spent a year building a Moorish Revival showpiece using an experimental poured-concrete process mixed with local coquina stone. Casa Monica opened on New Year’s Day 1888 with just three guests, but Smith ran out of money within four months and sold the entire operation, down to the linens and silverware, to Flagler for $325,000.
Flagler renamed it the Cordova Hotel and later connected it by bridge to his neighboring Alcazar Hotel. The building closed during the Depression and sat empty for decades until St. Johns County converted it into a courthouse in 1962, a role it held through the 1964 civil rights demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine. It reopened as a hotel under its original name in 1999.