Casa Monica Hotel - Latter 20th Century

Latter 20th Century

In February 1962, St. John's County Commission voted to purchase the former Casa Monica Hotel for $250,000 USD for use as the St. John's County Courthouse. In 1964 the lobby of the then-vacant hotel was used to house police dogs that were used against civil rights demonstrators during St. Augustine's greatest modern historic event: the mass campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Robert Hayling that led directly to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dr. King went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize a few months later. The renovation took over 6 years to complete. It was finally dedicated as a courthouse in May 1968, and filled that role until the 1990s, housing government offices and archives as well as courtrooms. A notable feature of the courthouse were murals by the artist Hugo Ohlms, whose distinctive work was also featured in the nearby Catholic Cathedral and at the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge (another civil rights landmark, where the arrest of Mrs. Peabody, the 72 year old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, while trying to be served in a racially integrated group, made national headlines in 1964). The Ohlms murals were removed when the courthouse was remodeled into its second incarnation as a hotel. Also removed were the stained glass scales of justice that had been in the quatrefoil window over the main door.