The Oldest Building in the Western Hemisphere is in your Backyard

By Angelica Wells and Carolina Alvarez

Hidden by gardens and tall banyan trees just south of Greynolds Park on West Dixie Highway is a sanctuary boasting Gothic architecture and a compelling history. The Ancient Spanish Monastery is, “the oldest building in the Western Hemisphere,”  according to tour guide Elise Lindley.

Built in 1141 in northern Spain, it was disassembled by America’s most famous newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, and shipped to America in the 1920s. The stones were misplaced in Brooklyn, then rediscovered and reassembled in North Miami Beach in the 1950s. 

Today, it welcomes over 120,000 visitors annually.

Madyuly and Robert Rodriguez, both 45, were middle school sweethearts. Robert grew up Greek Orthodox and Madyuly Catholic, but they nonetheless fell in love and were married at the monastery in January 2017 with a string quartet that played pop hits like Michael Jackson.

Ever since, the Rodriguez’s have driven from their home in Doral to the monastery every Sunday to attend the Episcopalian mass that is held there.

“I would hear about some monastery growing up but never looked into it,” Madyuly says. “But when my wedding came, it was everything I ever wanted.”

The history is part of the charm. 

“When I visit the garden, I’ll hear the monks from 700 years ago chanting,” she says. “It’s so spiritual and peaceful.”

Sarah Evans, 33, who is Jewish and from New York, was married at the monastery too, just this past February. After looking at conventional venues, she found the monastery online and visited for the first time last February.

History was part of the charm for her as well. 

“The moment we saw it, it just sort of transported you somewhere else,” she said. “It didn’t feel like you were in Florida. It was magical.” 

This magical place was built between 1133 AD to 1141 AD using approximately 35,000 stones in Segovia, Spain about 60 miles south of Madrid. 

Monks lived  there for 700 years starting in 1174. During a social revolution in the 1830s, the cloisters were seized and became stables. In 1925, William Randolph Hearst, who lived on the West Coast and owned newspapers from New York to San Francisco, bought the cloisters and outbuildings in hopes of rebuilding the monastery in the United States. 

Approximately 11,000 wooden crates were used to transport the stones. Then, The U.S. Department of Agriculture dismantled the crates, burned the protective hay and sorted through seven tons of nails as a precaution against the hoof-and-mouth disease occurring in Spain. 

When it was time to rebuild, the stones were placed in the wrong crates and the instructions were lost. Hearst faced financial turmoil and was forced to sell the monastery at auction in *year. The crates sat in a warehouse in Brooklyn for 26 years.

In 1952, entrepreneurs William Edgemon and Raymond Moss bought the monastery with plans for a tourist attraction. Nineteen months and $20 million later, the “biggest jigsaw puzzle in history,” was complete, according to Time Magazine.

Elise Lindley, 75, has been a tour guide at the monastery for three years.

“I get a lot of Hindus from India, Orthodox from the Soviet Union and I get people from all different countries,” she said. “It’s like a museum and a beautiful, ancient place.”

Marjorie Dean, 57, first visited the monastery in 2015. When she attended a jazz event. She had never heard of the place,but soon joined the board of directors and after five years became president of the Ancient Spanish Monastery Foundation. 

“I got into it straight away because I fell in love with the monastery,” says Dean. “I lived all around Europe for 10 years, and I found it astounding that a piece of it was in North Miami Beach.”

Adds Maria Furey, 56,who has been the horticulturist at the monastery for two years: “It's a place for people to come together. Like, how could you be angry at a place like the monastery?”

That’s why Mayduly Rodriguez was so happy with the place after her wedding that she kept coming weekly to the St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church, which celebrates mass there.

“The people and everything were very welcoming, and we kind of just fit in,” she says. “Like when I first went there, it seemed very familiar and we just gravitated there."

Admission is $10 and $5 for students for all-access. The monastery is open Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The church conducts mass on Sundays at 8 a.m., 10:15 a.m., and at 12:15 p.m in Spanish.