St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church

St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church is a medieval Spanish 
monastery cloister which was built in the town of Sacramenia, in the 
Province of Segovia, Spain in the 12th century and 
relocated to North Miami Beach, Florida, USA in the 20th 
century. 
 
The Cistercian monastery dedicated to Santa Maria Real was constructed during the years 1133-1141: its Romanesque abbey church remains one of the monuments of Sacramenia. Originally, it 
was named "Monastery of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels", but was 
renamed in the honor of Bernard of Clairvaux upon his 
canonization. Use of the building as a Cistercian monastery lasted for 
almost 700 years until it was seized and sold off to be used as a 
granary and a stable during a period of social unrest in the 
1830s. 
 
The monastery's cloisters and its outbuildings were purchased by 
William Randolph Hearst in 1925. In order to be transported to 
the USA, all building structures were carefully disassembled with 
each piece being numbered and packaged in wooden crates lined with 
hay. The total shipment comprised 11,000 crates. However, some of the 
information contained in this labelling was lost when the shipment was 
quarantined in the USA because of a break-out of hoof and mouth disease in Segovia. During the quarantine, the crates were opened 
and the hay filling was burned as a measure to prevent the spread of 
the disease. Afterwards, the content of the crates was not replaced 
correctly. William Randolph Hearst was ultimately unable to pursue his 
plan of rebuilding the monastery because of financial difficulties and 
hence the pieces were stored in a warehouse in Brooklyn, New York City until they were purchased in 1952 by Raymond Moss and 
William Edgemon who intended to turn it into a tourist attraction in 
northern Miami-Dade County. Reassembling the buildings at the site 
of a small plant nursery took 19 months and cost almost 1.5 million 
United States dollars. Some of the stones remained unused in the 
process. 
 
The property was purchased for the Episcopalian Diocese of South Florida by Bishop 
Henry Louttit in 1964, which later became the Dioceses of Central, 
Southeast and Southwest Florida. When the dioceses had to put the 
monastery up for sale due to financial difficulties, it was purchased 
by Colonel Robert Pentland, Jr. and given to the parish of St. Bernard de Clairvaux. 
==Location== 
The postal address of St. Bernard de Clairvaux Church is 16711 West 
Dixie Highway, North Miami Beach, FL 33160, USA. 
Category:Churches
Category:Florida