The Villa Zorayda construction technique was inspiration for Henry Flagler's hotels, though its builder's relationship with Flagler was short-lived.

Franklin Waldo Smith modeled his villa after the Alhambra Castle in Spain, and chose the name Zorayda from one of the princesses in Washington Irving's book on the Alhambra.

The building is a 1/10 scale of one wing of the castle. It was the second house in the United States built of poured concrete after the Ward House in Rye, New York, constructed between 1873-1876.

Smith, an early abolitionist, a founder of the YMCA in the US and the Republican Party in Massachusetts, was hired by Flagler in 1885 to supervise the concrete construction process in the Hotel Ponce de Leon but by January 1886 that relationship came to an end.

From a Design and Prospectus for a National Gallery of History of Art at Washington, Smith describes his study and project:

In the winter of 1882, while in Spain, I decided to build a winter home in St. Augustine after the model which the experience of centuries had proved desirable in semi-tropical countries. An oriental house of wood would be an anachronism; yet there was no stone in Florida. To freight it from the north would be an extravagance.

At Vevay, on Lake Geneva, subsequently, the dilemma of material was relieved. In the neighborhood a chateau was in construction using a poured concrete.

In the following December (1883) with a Boston mason, experiments were made, and the first concrete blocks of coquina sand and Portland cement were cast in St. Augustine for the Villa Zorayda. They are preserved as valuable relics.

Then the first course around the lines of the dwelling was laid in planks 10 inches high, and filled with the mixture. In two days a range of handsome smooth stone was revealed. It was followed by another immediately, and those layers hardened sufficiently to allow the raising of the walls a course every other day.

The partition walls were cast with the main walls in even courses, also the arches of the court so that the building is practically a monolith. Arches like the first cast were re-enforced and anchored to the walls by round iron rods.

The outer walls were cored with an air chamber, by a board buried in the boxing and then raised, like a boat's center-board, before the concrete hardened. In thirty days the walls were as hard as any building stone, and in a year as defiant of a drill as granite.

The facade of the Villa Zorayda is nearly in three detached sections. If really separate, the least jar of earthquake or the slightest settlement would be made apparent. For security against either, the sections are bound by imbedded railroad bars through the entire width of the building.

The Villa Zorayda Museum is open Monday - Saturday 10 am to 5 pm, Sundays 11 am to 4 pm.

Photo: William Henry Jackson, 1843-1942