Old Jail St Augustine

The Old Jail was built to move St. Augustine’s prisoners away from a hotel project. In 1891, Henry Flagler financed a new county jail after acquiring land needed for his Ponce de Leon Hotel. The jail was erected farther from the resort, turning a conflict over urban space into a Romanesque Revival building that looked, from the street, more like a large Victorian house than a penal institution.

The P.J. Pauley Jail Company designed and built the structure. Behind its domestic-looking exterior were cell blocks, a sheriff’s office and living quarters, and space for men and women detained by the county. The jail remained in service until 1953. Its building gives a tangible record of local government and incarceration during a period when Flagler’s hotels and rail connections were reshaping St. Augustine for tourism. The city’s public image and its mechanisms of law stood close together, even if the jail itself was placed out of the resort’s immediate view.