Once the largest wooden structure in the United States, the Ormond Hotel opened on January 1, 1888. It was built by J.D. Price and John Anderson with George Penfield as the architect
By the spring of 1899, the Florida East Coast Railway extended service from Jacksonville to Daytona. Railroad magnet Henry Flagler bought the hotel and enlarged it to handle 600 guests where it became one of a series of hotels along the line to accommodate his passengers, including the Ponce De Leon in St. Augustine, the Royal Poinciana Hotel and the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach and the Royal Palm Hotel in Miami.
In 1914 John D. Rockefeller arrived at the Ormond Hotel for the winter season and rented an entire floor for his staff and himself.
Rockefeller was not extravagant while there and played golf nearly every morning. He gave away polished dimes to children and nickels to adults he met along the way, which turned into a small local industry of people waiting to be met, positioning children along his golf route and on the sidewalks he was known to use on his morning drive.
After four seasons at the hotel he found out he was being overcharged and bought the Casements, a rambling shingled place named for its windows along the Halifax River where he lived until his death in 1937.
The Ormond Hotel was added to the U. S. National Register of Historic Places on November 24, 1980 and was razed to the ground to make way for the Ormond Heritage Condominiums.
The original cupola from the hotel now stands in Fortunado Park directly west of the former hotel.
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