Neale Hurston, Robert Frost, John Dos Passos, and, most particularly, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, visited or lived in St. Augustine during this time, and there was an active community of artists. Coast Guard training center During World War II, the Ponce de Leon Hotel was taken over by the federal government and was used as a Coast Guard Training Center. St. Augustine is considered to be the birthplace of the Coast Guard Reserve, as one of the first classes to graduate from Reserve officer training did so at St. Augustine in May 1941. From 1942 until the end of the war in 1945, thousands of young recruits received their basic and advanced training at the hotel, with up to 2,500 trainees living in the building at any one time. One of the Coast Guardsmen the trained at the hotel was Jacob Lawrence, already a famous artist. According to the official Coast Guard history, In October 1943 Lawrence was drafted into the Coast Guard, then part of the Navy. As the armed services were still segregated, he, along with all African-American recruits, were automatically limited to the steward's mate rate. After his basic training at Curtis Bay, Maryland he was assigned to the Ponce de Leon Hotel (commandeered by the Coast Guard) in St. Augustine. Despite his rate, Lawrence was urged to continue his artistic endeavors by his commanding officer, Captain J.S. Rosenthal. He was later transferred to USCGC Sea Cloud [1944], the first integrated ship in the naval services. He would go on to be the first African-American artist to have his works hung in both the Vatican and the White House. Post-war return to hotel After the war ended, the building was deactivated by the Coast Guard and returned to operation as a hotel. Large crowds that had stayed away from the city during the war returned, but the boom did not last. The hotel saw declining visitor numbers in the following years, and in 1967 it was permanently closed. Flagler College In 1968 the hotel became the centerpiece of the newly-established Flagler College. Beginning in 1976, with the nation's bicentennial anniversary, Flagler College embarked on an ambitious campaign to restore the hotel and other Flagler-era campus buildings to their original grandeur. In 1988 the College celebrated the centennial of the Ponce de Leon Hotel, and a decade later students created the Flagler's Legacy program, which provides guided historic tours