1888 Moorish Revival Hotel in America's Oldest City
95 Cordova St, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
$240-$550/night based on pre-research; 138-room hotel. Room categories include Standard through Flagler suite.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Full-service hotel with elevator in America's oldest city
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1888 · Spanish Revival Architecture · Flagler Era Florida · Historic Hotels of America · St. Augustine Heritage
Franklin W. Smith, a Boston businessman with a passion for Spanish and Moorish architecture, designed and built Casa Monica to open on January 1, 1888. St. Augustine, founded by Spanish colonists in 1565, is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States, and Smith intended the hotel's architecture to reflect that heritage — the Moorish towers, arched windows, and ornamental tilework are direct references to the Andalusian and North African influences in Spanish colonial building. Smith used an experimental concrete process incorporating crushed coquina and Portland cement.
Henry Flagler, who had co-founded Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller and was then building his Florida East Coast Railway and transforming Florida into a winter resort destination, purchased the hotel in May 1888 — only about four months after it opened. He renamed it the Cordova Hotel and incorporated it into his broader development of St. Augustine.
The Depression forced Casa Monica to close in 1932. The building sat largely vacant until 1962, when the St. Johns County Commission voted to acquire it; the property was dedicated as the St. Johns County Courthouse in May 1968 and filled that role until the 1990s — an unglamorous institutional use that preserved the structure through decades when less substantial buildings in the area were demolished. Richard Kessler purchased the building in February 1997 and completed a restoration in less than two years; it reopened as a hotel in December 1999. The hotel was added to the Historic Hotels of America roster and later affiliated with Marriott's Autograph Collection. It appears on the 2025 Historic Hotels of America most-haunted list.
Sources
The paranormal record at Casa Monica circulates primarily through St. Augustine ghost tours and travel blogs rather than through the hotel's own programming — the Casa Monica does not formally market its reputation.
The fourth floor has produced the most consistent pattern of guest- and staff-reported phenomena. Housekeeping and guests have reported the sound of children running through hallways on this floor when no children are present. The sounds have been described as specific — patter and energy of active children — rather than generic ambient sound.
The apparition reported most frequently in the upper-floor hallways is a woman in a white gown who appears near Rooms 411 and 511 and vanishes when approached. Multiple accounts describe her expression as confused or searching.
Ghost-tour lore connects an apparition in the lobby and on the staircase to a young woman said to have died in an 1895 fire — a story that recurs across St. Augustine paranormal sites but is not corroborated by Wikipedia, the Historic Hotels of America history page, or other primary historical sources. Treat it as legend inherited from the city's ghost-tour circuit rather than documented fact.
St. Augustine's ghost tour circuit includes Casa Monica as a stop, and the hotel appears on regional paranormal travel lists.
Notable Entities
138-room Moorish Revival hotel completed in 1888 by architect Franklin W. Smith in St. Augustine, the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States. Rooms 411 and 511 carry the strongest paranormal reputations; the fourth floor is associated with phantom children and an apparition in white. The hotel is part of the Marriott Autograph Collection.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
St. Augustine, FL
Casa de Sueños — 'House of Dreams' — was built as a single-family home in 1904 by the Carcaba cigar-making family at 20 Cordova Street in St. Augustine. After remodeling into Mediterranean Revival style, the home spent more than two decades as a working funeral home before reopening as a bed-and-breakfast in the late 1990s.
St. Augustine, FL
Casablanca Inn on the Bay opened in 1914 as the Matanzas Hotel on St. Augustine's bayfront. Built in the Mediterranean Revival style by an architect named Butler, the property has operated as a hotel or inn for over a century and is closely associated with Prohibition-era smuggling in the St. Augustine waterfront.
St. Augustine, FL
The St. Francis Inn at 279 St. George Street was built in 1791 by Sergeant Gaspar Garcia of the Spanish 3rd Infantry Battalion as a private residence on a Spanish royal land grant. Over more than two centuries the building has served as a private home, boarding house, and bed-and-breakfast, and is among the oldest continuously occupied buildings in St. Augustine.