Standing before the grand staircase in the lobby of the British Colonial Hotel in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, I was transported back in time.
The British Colonial Hotel is the oldest operating resort in Nassau. It was founded and financed by American industrialist Henry Flagler in 1900 and opened for business the following year. The hotel you see today dates back to 1924 after a fire destroyed the original property roughly two decades after its doors first opened. In 1932, British entrepreneur Sir Henry Oakes bought the property and renamed it as it is today: the British Colonial.