Changes

|location=1 North [[Palafox Street]]

|client=James Muldon & F.F. Bingham|engineer=[[C. H. Turner]]

|construction_start_date=April 1909|completion_date=[[1910]]|renovations=c. 1924 (expansion)|date_demolished=[[1993]]

|style=Mediterranean Revival|size=Seven  stories, 150 rooms

The '''San Carlos Hotel''', sometimes called the '''Hotel San Carlos''' and affectionately dubbed the '''Gray Lady of Palafox''', was a fine grand and revered hotel in Pensacola for much of the 20th century.

The San Carlos Hotel was completed the project of local businessmen [[James Muldon]] and [[F.F. Bingham]], who saw the need for the kind of upscale hotel being erected in larger cities. Regarding the site, their original choice was the northeast corner of [[Palafox Street|Palafox]] and [[Garden Street]]s, which had no significant structures at the time (but would soon be occupied by the [[Isis Theatre]]). However, they instead purchased the northwest corner from the [[1910First Methodist Church]], which was relocating to [[Wright Street]]. It  The hotel was designed by New York architect [[W. L. Stoddard ]] and erected by local firm [[C. H. Turner]] Construction Co. at a cost of $500,000. A sturdy beam-and-girder structural system, designed to withstand [[hurricane]] winds, was covered by ceramic tile and stucco. Ground was broken in April of [[1909]], and construction was completed in [[1910]]. It opened its doors on the first day of [[Mardi Gras]] celebrations. The hotel had its own well, with a rooftop cistern and purification system, and the original 157 rooms each had an exterior window and modern furnishings. Muldon and Bingham leased operation of the hotel to [[George Charles Harvey]] until [[1919]], and then to the Newcomb Hotel Company until [[1922]], when it was sold to lumber magnate [[William B. Harbeson]] and managed by his son-in-law. The new owners soon announced a massive expansion on the north and west sides of the hotel that maintained a consistent facade and added 246 rooms, a ballroom, a new lobby, and space for offices and shops. The hotel fared well enough during the Depression years; the seventh floor was retrofitted in [[1931]] to accommodate the [[WCOA]] radio studio, and in [[1934]] artist [[Joy Apostle]] painted murals in the main lobby and dining room. The future of the hotel seemed assured, and when ownership passed to the [[Hagler family]] after Harbeson's death, new expansion plans were announced. However, with the advent of roadside motels in the 1950s — conveniently spaced every few miles along the highway, offering air-conditioned rooms at inexpensive rates — the San Carlos could not compete. It entered a period of decline and neglect from which it would not recover. The San Carlos Hotel closed ceased operations in [[1982]] and lay vacant for more than a decade. After a proposal by [[Baptist Health Care]] to convert it to retirement apartments failed to materialize, the hotel was demolished in [[1993]]. A new [[United States Courthouse]] was later built on the site.