Question: Who purchased the cloisters of the Ancient Spanish Monastery from Spain in 1925, which is now in North Miami Beach?
Answer: William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst bought the cloisters, which were taken apart stone by stone and shipped to the U.S. in 11,000 separate, numbered boxes. Unfortunately for Hearst, the cloister stones had been shipped with hay that may have been contaminated with hoof-and-mouth disease, which had just broken out in Spain. The boxes were quarantined and emptied, the hay was burned, and the stones were returned randomly to the boxes. The cloisters remained in boxes in a Brooklyn warehouse until Hearst’s death in 1952.
Two Miami businessmen—William Edgemon and Raymond Moss—bought the Monastery’s remains in 1952 with plans to turn it into a tourist attraction. The final construction of the Ancient Spanish Monastery in Miami took 19 months and nearly $20 million to complete. In 1964, it was sold to multimillionaire and banker Colonel Robert Pentland, Jr., who gave the monastery to the Bishop of Florida. Today, it is owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida.
