Villa Zorayda has held its place on King Street since Franklin W. Smith built it as his winter home in 1883. An eccentric Boston millionaire and amateur architect, Smith modeled this house on the 12th-century Moorish Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain and named it "Villa Zorayda" after one of the princesses in Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra. It was the first residence in the Moorish Revival style in Florida and the first poured concrete building in St. Augustine.
Smith was a pioneer experimenter in poured concrete construction: his concrete mix used crushed coquina shells as an aggregate and he poured it in successive levels to raise these walls. In 1913 the building and part of Smith's art and antique collection were sold to Abraham Mussallem, a rug and antiquities merchant originally from Syria. On September 23, 1993 Villa Zorayda was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Today the Villa Zorayda Museum remains owned by the Mussallem family and still contains the original art and antique collection assembled by Franklin Smith and Abraham Mussallem. Notice the Moorish-inspired details and coquina-filled concrete that Franklin Smith modeled on Granada's Alhambra Palace.