The Ancient Spanish Monastery
A 12th-century Spanish monastery that William Randolph Hearst bought, had disassembled stone by stone, shipped to New York in 11,000 crates, and then abandoned. It ended up in North Miami Beach.
The Monastery of Saint Bernard de Clairvaux was built in Segovia, Spain in 1133. It operated as a monastery for 700 years. In 1925, William Randolph Hearst bought it, had it taken apart stone by stone, and shipped to the United States in 11,000 crates. Then the Great Depression hit, the crates sat in a Brooklyn warehouse for 26 years, and Hearst died without reassembling it.
The monastery is at 16711 W Dixie Hwy in North Miami Beach, open Tuesday–Sunday. Admission is $10. The cloisters are genuinely beautiful and genuinely 900 years old. The garden is one of the quietest places in Miami-Dade County.
Two entrepreneurs bought the crates in 1952, shipped them to Miami, and spent 19 months reassembling the monastery from Hearst's incomplete inventory. Some stones were mixed up during the original packing. The monastery is not quite right, but it is real, and it is 900 years old, and it is in North Miami Beach.