MUSEUM & CULTURE
Old Jail Museum
St. Johns County · Atlantic Coast
The 1891 county jail that Henry Flagler paid to move off his hotel grounds, now toured by costumed guides who process visitors as prisoners.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Henry Flagler wanted the county jail off the land he needed for the Ponce de Leon Hotel, so he struck a deal with St. Johns County for ten thousand dollars and had a new one built away from the tourists. The P.J. Pauley Jail Building and Manufacturing Company put it up in 1891 in Romanesque Revival style, and it was designed to look like anything but a jail from the road. It held up to 72 prisoners in one wing while the sheriff and his family lived in the other, which is the detail visitors remember: Sheriff Charles Joseph Perry raised his children on the far side of a wall from the cells. It stayed in use until 1953. Henry McDaniel turned the empty building into an attraction afterward. Today it is seen only on a guided tour, with costumed staff booking visitors in as inmates, and the displays cover weapons, the cells and the executions carried out there. It went on the National Register on August 27, 1987
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