Fred A Henderich (1879 – 1941) was a leading architect of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. He was a native of New York and graduated from Columbia University. Henderich came to Saint Augustine in 1905 to work for Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Hotel Company and lived and worked in the city for over twenty years.[1]
Henderich designed multiple bungalow style homes in Saint Augustine — many on Saint George Street south of Saint Francis, where his father-in-law developed a large tract of land. These homes exhibited native wood shingles, palm tree porch posts, and coquina stone fireplaces.[2]
Houses include:
Henderich also took advantage of the area's natural resources to bring the Mediterranean Revival style to Florida in civic architecture. After the original Flagler Hospital was destroyed by fire in 1916, Mary Lily Kenan (the widow of Henry Flagler) and the hospital's ladies auxiliary raised funds toward construction of a new building. The new Flagler Hospital opened in 1921, designed by Henderich with a stucco shell dash exterior and a red tile roof.[3] It was demolished in the late 20th century, and replaced by a new complex south of town. In 1925, Henderich designed a masonry structure at 102 Martin Luther King Ave (then Central Avenue) which served as Saint Augustine's first public high school for African-Americans. The Colored School was renamed Excelsior in 1928 and served as Lincolnville's community center for over forty years. It was retired as a high school in 1968 and reopened as the Excelsior Museum and Cultural Center in 2005.[4]
Henderich's major Florida buildings include: