THE ANCIENT SPANISH MONASTERY
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A still-active monastery with splendid gardens. It's a surprising visit for lovers of the unusual.
This monastic complex, consisting of a magnificent cloister, gardens, and the church of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, is widely promoted as the oldest building in North America. It is often given a date of birth that wrongly dates back to the 9th century. It is in fact a monastery of Segovia dating from 1141. It seems that the complex is part of the buildings that William Randolph Hearst(Citizen Kane) bought in Europe in 1925. The monastery was dismantled piece by piece and each element carefully crated. It was to be rebuilt at San Simeon, Hearst's California estate. But when the crates arrived in the United States, customs officials quarantined them, fearing the contagion of a disease that was rampant in the region of origin. The straw suspected of carrying the virus was burned and the blocks of stone were removed from their numbered packages, making it impossible to return to a coherent order. Writer Ben Hecht tells the story in his memoir, Child of the Century. The monastery lay abandoned in New York for 26 years before being bought by two entrepreneurs. It took them 19 months to rebuild the monastery. In 1964, it was sold to Colonel Robert Pentland Junior. The monastery is still active today. Masses are held on Sundays and weekdays in English and Spanish. A surprising visit that will please those who love the unusual!
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