Monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux (North Miami Beach, Florida)

 monastery, Order of Cistercians, interesting place, historic remains

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The Oldest Building in the Western Hemishphere. This was a Spanish monastery built in 1133 in Sacramenia, Spain and occupied by Cistercian monks for over 700 years. William Randolph Hearst bought it and had it entirely disassembled, and each stone numbered. He planned to erect it at Hearst Castle for use as a pool house. When the stones arrived at the Port of Miami, they were packed in the numbered cases, and padded with straw. Because of a hoof-and-mouth disease quarantine, the stones were uncrated upon arrival in Miami, and the straw (and the crates with all the numbers) were burned! Hearst gave up on the project, and the stones then sat at the Port for many years, until purchased in 1954 and erected here. Reportedly it was quite a challenging 3-D jigsaw puzzle, and took a long time to reassemble the building without the stones' numbers. There is some irony that the oldest building in America is to be found in one of the newest cities!

Open seven days a week, Mon.-Sat. 10 am-4:30 pm and Sun. 11 am-4:30 pm. The Chapel is open for mass on Sundays at 8 am and 10:15 am in English and 12:15 pm for Spanish services.