St. Augustine Historical & Touristic Places
Anastasia State Park is a 1,600-acre (6.5 km2) state park in Florida. Its location is on a peninsula on Anastasia Island across Matanzas Bay from downtown St. Augustine along the Atlantic coastal plain. This park has a variety of wildlife, birds and plants in a setting of beaches, tidal salt marsh, and marine and upland hammock.
It is also home to the Old Spanish Coquina Quarries, an archaeological site from which the coquina stone used in the construction of the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine was mined, earning it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. Acquired by the state of Florida in 1949.
It is believed that the first building on this property dates back as early as 1650–1680, and was built of ripio, a shell concrete mixture. The original structure was replaced around 1725 with a building made of coquina. Don Raimundo de Arrivas is listed as the owner of the property on a 1764 map, which was created as an inventory of buildings that the Spanish compiled for the British when Florida became a colony of Great Britain.
During the British Period, the property was placed in the charge of a British agent, Jesse Fish. The property later reverted to the Arrivas heirs when Florida was regained by Spain in 1783. A 1788 map shows that the building had evolved into a large L-shaped masonry house, very similar to the structure that stands today. From 1824 until 1960 ownership changed over 20 times, with several architectural changes made, including the addition of a second story and balconies.
Paul Arnau, St. Augustine Collector of Customs and Superintendent of Lighthouses, was another notable resident of the Arrivas House. While St. Augustine was under Confederate control, he oversaw the darkening of the St. Augustine Lighthouse and removed its lighting apparatus. In November 1861, Arnau was elected mayor, a post he resigned when the Union took control of the town. He was imprisoned until lighting mechanisms, which he had stored in his home, were returned to the Union Navy.
In 1670, Charles Town (modern-day Charleston, South Carolina) was founded by English colonists. As it was just two days' sail from St. Augustine, the English settlement and encroachment of English traders into Spanish territory spurred the Spanish in their construction of a fort.
Slaves from the Carolina colony began escaping to St Augustine in 1687, where the Spanish agreed to free (and employ) them if they converted to Catholicism. When a British master attempted to retrieve escapees in 1688, the Spanish Governor Diego de Quiroga refused. King Charles II issued an official policy in 1693, cementing the informal practice.
In 1702, English colonial forces under the command of Carolina Governor James Moore embarked on an expedition to capture St. Augustine early in Queen Anne's War. The English laid siege to St. Augustine in November 1702. About 1,500 town residents and soldiers were crammed into the fort during the two-month siege. The small English cannons had little effect on the walls of the fort, because the coquina masonry was very effective at absorbing the impact of cannonballs causing them to sink into the walls, rather than shattering or puncturing them.
The siege was broken when the Spanish fleet from Havana arrived, trapping some English vessels in the bay. The English were defeated and decided to burn their ships to prevent them from falling under Spanish control, and then marched overland back to Carolina. The town of St. Augustine was destroyed, in part by the Spanish and in part by the English, as a result of the siege.
In the mid-1560s, as the Spanish Empire expanded northward from the Caribbean to unexplored Florida, it founded the colony of St. Augustine, which has become the oldest continuously occupied European settlement on the United States mainland. Spanish settlers immediately established a shrine of the Catholic Church, the religion essential to the Spanish monarchy throughout its history. From the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s, the kingdom of Spain was undergoing a Catholic Revival in opposition to the Protestant Reformation.
As the early colonists mainly were sailors or soldiers with little expertise in architecture, the first church of St. Augustine was designed and rapidly built of disparate materials. The original parish was short-lived, burning to the ground in a 1586 attack on the town by the Englishman Sir Francis Drake. Two decades previously, the colonists hastily built a new church of straw and palmetto, which deteriorated quickly in the humid climate and burned down in 1599.
A tithe was raised in Spain, and in 1605, a third church was built, this time more permanently of timber by experienced architects and builders who had begun to make their way to the New World. For 95 years, it stayed intact, though in disrepair, before again burning down in 1702 during a failed English attempt on the city by Carolina Governor James Moore.
The church vanished for over ninety years, despite an attempt to rebuild in 1707, with royal rebuilding funds misspent on provisions, soldiers' pay, and graft by public officials. During the first half of the 18th century, priests held Mass in St. Augustine's hospital, which became too small for the congregation and embarrassed it before the Native American converts to Catholicism.
From 1763 to 1784, Florida fell under British rule, and reconstruction was forgotten. After Spain regained the colony in 1784, a new sense of pride in the citizenry led to the large-scale construction of the current church from 1793 to 1797. It became a cathedral in 1870 and a minor basilica in 1976.
In 1882, Thomas Hines Coleman, a young deaf man, was preparing to graduate from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the only college for the deaf in the world at that time. He had graduated from the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind and knew he wanted to make education for children his life's work.
Florida was one of the few states that had not made provision for the education of children who were deaf/hard of hearing or who had visual impairments. Coleman wrote Governor William D. Bloxham and he replied favorably toward the establishment of such a school. As their correspondence continued, the sum of $20,000 was reached as a minimum appropriation to start the school.
In 1883, Florida's legislature established an institution for the blind and deaf children for two years at $20,000. They requested bids from towns in the state for the location for the school. St. Augustine offered the best bid with $1,000 cash and 5 acres (20,000 m2) of land, the land donated by Captain Edward E. Vaill, a pioneer of the city. Contractor William A. MacDuff erected the original first three wooden buildings at $12,749; they were completed in December 1884.
The school opened in December, 1885 as The School for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb. Although the school had both black and white children in its early years, social opposition to racial integration was rampant, and the Florida Institute for the Blind, Deaf and Dumb, Colored Department was created in 1895. By 1892, there were 62 students enrolled and the first graduation ceremony, for two white deaf students, Artemas W. Pope and Cora Carlton, was held in 1898. The first graduation for a white blind student, DeWitt Lightsey, was held in 1898 and the first graduation for a black blind student, Louise Jones, was in 1914. The first graduation for a black deaf student, Cary White, was in 1925. The school was racially integrated in 1967 with the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind.
The school was under the direction of a five-member board of trustees until 1905. The Florida legislature established the present seven-member Board of Trustees in 1963.
Construction began on new dormitories in late 1958 and they opened in 1959. Taylor Hardwick was the architect of record.
Henry Flagler set his sights on building the Hotel Alcazar across the street from the Hotel Ponce de Leon, but this site was already occupied by Olivet Methodist Episcopal Church, built in 1884. Flagler offered the trustees of the church a new plot of land and to pay the construction costs for a new church structure, which they accepted. Flagler gave them a plot of land behind his first hotel, the Hotel Ponce de Leon, at the northwest corner of Carrera and Cordova Streets. Construction on the church and an attached parsonage began in 1886 and was completed the following year. On January 1, 1888, the first service was held in the new church, named Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, and it was dedicated later in January by Bishop W.F. Mallelieu.
In total, the church's construction cost about $85,000. Just like the Hotel Ponce de Leon, the church was designed by John M. Carrere and Thomas Hastings, of Carrere and Hastings architecture firm in New York, and constructed by contractors James A. McGuire and Joseph E. McDonald. It was built of poured concrete, an underused building material and process at the time, and was designed to complement the other Flagler buildings in St. Augustine with a Spanish Renaissance Revival architectural style. The concrete also contained shell aggregate and sand in order to withstand the sometimes harsh physical environment of coastal Florida. The red Spanish tile and terracotta designs that appear on the door and on the church's tower are consistent with Spanish Renaissance style. The sanctuary was adorned with Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows, just like the Ponce de Leon.
In 1947, a home across the street was purchased to serve as the church's parsonage, and the old parsonage was converted into an educational building for Sunday school classes and other church activities. Much of the interior was remodeled in the late 1950s. Some of the updates undertaken at this time included refinishing the walls and woodwork, remodeling the chancel and choir loft, rewiring and adding new light fixtures, installing a heating and air conditioning system, and installing new pews. The Tiffany windows remain.
In 2011, Grace UMC merged with Christ Church, another Methodist church in St. Augustine.
The hotel was commissioned by Henry Flagler, to appeal to wealthy tourists who traveled south for the winter on his railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway. It was designed by New York City architects Carrère and Hastings, in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style. The firm also designed the Ponce de León Hotel across the street, now part of the campus of Flagler College. Both structures are notable for being among the earliest examples of poured concrete buildings in the world. These architects later designed the New York Public Library in New York City and the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.
The hotel had a steam room, massage parlor, sulfur baths, gymnasium, a three-story ballroom, and the world's largest indoor swimming pool; however, after years as an elegant winter resort for wealthy patrons, the hotel closed in 1932.
On August 20, 1947 Chicago publisher Otto C. Lightner purchased the building to convert the old hotel into a hobbies museum. He used the space to house several collections, including his own extensive collection of Victorian era art. He then turned it over to the city of St. Augustine and the museum opened to the public in 1948.
The building is an attraction in itself, centering on an open courtyard with palm trees and a stone arch bridge over a koi pond.
The hotel was commissioned by Henry Flagler, to appeal to wealthy tourists who traveled south for the winter on his railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway. It was designed by New York City architects Carrère and Hastings, in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style. The firm also designed the Ponce de León Hotel across the street, now part of the campus of Flagler College. Both structures are notable for being among the earliest examples of poured concrete buildings in the world. These architects later designed the New York Public Library in New York City and the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C.
The hotel had a steam room, massage parlor, sulfur baths, gymnasium, a three-story ballroom, and the world's largest indoor swimming pool; however, after years as an elegant winter resort for wealthy patrons, the hotel closed in 1932.
On August 20, 1947 Chicago publisher Otto C. Lightner purchased the building to convert the old hotel into a hobbies museum. He used the space to house several collections, including his own extensive collection of Victorian era art. He then turned it over to the city of St. Augustine and the museum opened to the public in 1948.
The building is an attraction in itself, centering on an open courtyard with palm trees and a stone arch bridge over a koi pond.
A portion of the land east of the residence was sold by Dr. Andrew Anderson Jr., the son of Dr. Anderson Sr, in 1887 to Henry M. Flagler for construction of the Ponce de León Hotel. Dr. Anderson Jr. died in 1924. The house was then purchased by the mayor of St. Augustine, Herbert E. Wolfe, who sold it to Flagler College in 1966.
Spanish explorers, under the command of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the spiritual chaplaincy of Fr Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, OFM, arrived in northern Florida in 1565. Grajalez celebrated there the first Mass in what would become the United States. The mission established there, Nombre de Dios, was also the first in that regard.
The settlers brought with them the Spanish devotion to Nuestra Señora de La Leche y Buen Parto ("Our Lady of the Milk and Good Delivery"). The name comes from the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus, hence the reference to "la leche"—i.e., (breast) milk.
The shrine was built in 1609 at the mission, in what was then Spanish Florida. The central feature of the shrine is a statue of the La Leche image.
The original shrine was destroyed in 1728 by British invaders from the north, and was rebuilt in 1875. The chapel seats about 30 and was built in 1914.
The shrine was elevated to national shrine status by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 2019, followed by the announcement of a canonical coronation ceremony due to take place in October 2020. It was authorized by a decree dated 24 January 2019.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused the rescheduling of the coronation to 10 October 2021.
As one of the oldest Catholic worship sites in the Americas, the shrine holds a certain historical significance and is a popular pilgrimage site, especially for prayers concerning pregnancy.
Upon its coronation ceremony in October 2021, it became just the sixth-such Marian image in the United States.
The Old Jail (also known as Authentic Old Jail) is a historic jail in St. Augustine, Florida, United States. It is located at 167 San Marco Avenue. On August 27, 1987, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The St. Johns County Jail now serves as the Old Jail Museum.
The building was designed and constructed by the P.J. Pauley Jail Building and Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, Missouri in 1891. Its construction was financed by Henry Flagler, who struck a deal with the county for $10,000 because the former jail building stood on land that Flagler needed for the construction of his Ponce de León Hotel. The Old Jail served as the St Johns County Jail until 1953. After the jail facilities were moved to a new, more modern building, the vacant Old Jail building was sold to entrepreneur Henry "Slim" McDaniel who began operating the remarkably well-preserved building as a roadside tourist attraction. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
Originally built to house up to 72 prisoners, the two-story northern wing of the jail consists of a general population and maximum-security area, a women's section and a lower level kitchen. Maximum security housed the most dangerous prisoners held at the jail and includes a death row cell, for those condemned to die. A total of eight men were hung from the gallows on the jail compound during its history. Overall conditions at the jail for those serving varying sentences were quite poor by modern standards and prisoners were typically used as free farm laborers during the day. Baths were infrequent, toilet facilities consisted of one bucket per cell and diet was poor and was typically supplemented by any animals that the prisoners might catch while working in the fields. Segregation by race was steadfastly adhered to at the jail and disease, violence and death were commonplace. The two-story southern wing of the jail consists of an office for the sheriff and living quarters for his family.
The Hotel Ponce de Leon, also known as The Ponce, was a luxury hotel in St. Augustine, Florida, built by millionaire developer and Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler. Built between 1885–1887, the winter resort opened in January 1888. The hotel was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style as the first major project of the New York architecture firm Carrère & Hastings, which gained world renown for more than 600 projects, including the House and Senate Office Buildings flanking the US Capitol. Their final project was the New York Public Library.
The hotel is the first of its kind constructed entirely of poured concrete, using the local coquina stone as aggregate. The hotel is one of the first buildings in the country wired for electricity from the onset, with the power being supplied by DC generators installed by Flagler's friend, Thomas Edison.
Since 1968, with the founding of Flagler College, the original building and grounds of the hotel serve as the centerpiece of the campus Flagler College.
The park began in 1893 on St. Augustine Beach as a minor attraction at the end of a railway running through neighboring Anastasia Island. The alligators were added at first to get visitors to buy souvenirs and see the museum there. Soon, the reptiles themselves became the main point of interest.
Growing in popularity, the park moved to its current location in the early 1920s. The park changed owners in the 1930s, and, after a devastating fire, they started reconstruction and expansion of the facilities. In 1993, for their 100-year anniversary, the park became the first place in the world to display every species of crocodilian.
In 2008, the zoo opened a new Komodo dragon facility that also exhibits lizards and snakes found within Southeast Asia.
On September 10, 1992, the Alligator Farm was designated a U.S. Historic District. As such, it was referred to as the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Historic District. According to the National Register of Historic Places, it covers less than 1 acre (4,000 m2), and contains one building and one structure.
The amphitheatre was built in 1965 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of St. Augustine, originally with 2,000 seats. land was originally part of Anastasia State Park. The amphitheatre itself was constructed in one of the old coquina quarries used to supply building materials for St. Augustine and the Castillo de San Marcos.
The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paul Green was commissioned to write a play to be performed at the amphitheater. The result was Cross and Sword: A Symphonic Drama of the Spanish Settlement of Florida, a musical reenactment of the first years of St. Augustine's existence. Cross and Sword were designated the official state play in 1973 by the Florida Legislature. The play ran until 1996, when budget constraints ended its more than 30-year run.
The amphitheatre was used infrequently during the following years, though it did host a free summer Shakespeare Festival from 1997 to 2003. In 2002, St. Johns County acquired the property and the following year began an $8.7 million renovation. The upgraded facility reopened in August 2007, which includes a fiberglass tensile canopy over the main stage. It now has 4,092 seats. In 2019, the theater branded itself as "The Amp". Also in 2019, the Amp is ranked #2 amphitheatre in the United States and #3 worldwide according to leading concert-industry publication Pollstar Magazine's 2019 Mid-Year report.
The St. Augustine Civic Center (also known as the Visitor's Information Center) is a historic site in St. Augustine, Florida. It is located at 10 Castillo Drive. On April 21, 2005, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Though the given address is at 10 Castillo Drive, the actual location is on the southwest corner of West Castillo Drive and South Castillo Drive, the latter of which is part of an overlap of US Business Route 1 and Florida State Road A1A. The Civic Center is next door to the St. Augustine Huguenot Cemetery, and contains a mile-marker for the eastern terminus of the Old Spanish Trail. An intermodal parking garage can be found behind the civic center with a bus loop along West Castillo Drive, and another one extending north from the intersection of Orange Street and Cordova Street.
The St. Augustine Light Station is a privately maintained aid to navigation and an active, working lighthouse in St. Augustine, Florida. The current lighthouse stands at the north end of Anastasia Island and was built between 1871 and 1874. The tower is the second lighthouse tower in St. Augustine, the first being lit officially by the American territorial government in May 1824 as Florida's first lighthouse. However, both the Spanish and the British governments operated a major aid to navigation here including a series of wooden watch towers and beacons dating from 1565.
The current lighthouse tower, original first-order Fresnel Lens and the Light Station grounds are owned by the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum, Inc., a not-for-profit maritime museum. The museum is open to the public 360 days a year. Admission fees support continued preservation of the lighthouse and five other historic structures. Admissions and museum memberships also fund programs in maritime archaeology, traditional wooden boatbuilding, and maritime education. The nonprofit mission is to "discover, preserve, present and keep alive the stories of the nation's oldest port as symbolized by our working St. Augustine Lighthouse."
St. Augustine was the site of the first lighthouse established in Florida by the new, territorial, American Government in 1824. According to some archival records and maps, this "official" American lighthouse was placed on the site of an earlier watchtower built by the Spanish as early as the late 16th century. A map of St. Augustine made by Baptista Boazio in 1589, depicting Sir Francis Drake's attack on the city, shows an early wooden watch tower near the Spanish structure, which was described as a "beacon" in Drake's account. By 1737, Spanish authorities built a more permanent tower from coquina taken from a nearby quarry on the island. Archival records are inconclusive as to whether the Spanish used the coquina tower as a lighthouse, but it seems plausible, given the levels of maritime trade by that time. The structure was regularly referred to as a "lighthouse" in documents—including ship's logs and nautical charts—dating to the British Period beginning in 1763.
In 1783, the Spanish once again took control of St. Augustine, and once again the lighthouse was improved. Swiss-Canadian engineer and marine surveyor Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres marks a coquina "Light House" on Anastasia Island in his 1780 engraving, "A Plan of the Harbour of St. Augustin". Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, Royal French Hydrographer, refers to the coquina tower as a "Batise" in Volume I of Petit Atlas Maritime. The accuracy of these scholars is debated still; DesBarres's work includes some obvious errors, but Bellin is considered highly qualified. His work provides an important reference to St. Augustine's geography and landmarks in 1764. Facing erosion and a changing coastline, the old tower crashed into the sea in 1880, but not before a new lighthouse was lit. Today, the tower ruins are a submerged archaeological site.
Early lamps in the first tower burned lard oil. Multiple lamps with silver reflectors were replaced by a fourth order Fresnel lens in 1855, greatly improving the lighthouse's range and eliminating some maintenance issues.
At the beginning of the Civil War, future mayor Paul Arnau, a local Menorcan harbor master, along with the lightkeeper, a woman named Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu (who, in this role, became the first Hispanic-American woman to serve in the Coast Guard), removed the lens from the old lighthouse and hid it, in order to block Union shipping lanes as well as to help blockade runners remain hidden.
The lens and clock works were recovered after Arnau was held captive on a ship off-shore and forced to reveal their location.
By 1870, beach erosion was threatening the first lighthouse. Construction on a new light tower began in 1871 during Florida's reconstruction period. In the meantime, a jetty of coquina and brush was built to protect the old tower. A trolley track brought building supplies from the ships at the dock. The new tower was completed in 1874, and put into service with a new first order Fresnel lens. It was lit for the first time in October by keeper William Russell. Russell was the first lighthouse keeper in the new tower, and the only keeper to have worked both towers.
For 20 years, the site was manned by head-keeper William A. Harn of Philadelphia. Major Harn was a Union war hero who had commanded his own battery at the Battle of Gettysburg. With his wife, Kate Skillen Harn, of Maine, he had six daughters. The family was known for serving lemonade out on the porches of the keepers' house, which was constructed as a Victorian duplex during Harn's tenure.
On August 31, 1886, the Charleston earthquake caused the tower to "sway violently", according to the keeper's log, but there was no recorded damage.
In 1885, after many experiments with different types of oils, the lamp was converted from lard oil to kerosene.
During World War II, Coast Guard men and women trained in St. Augustine, and used the lighthouse as a lookout post for enemy ships and submarines which frequented the coastline.
In 1907, indoor plumbing reached the light station, followed by electricity in the keeper's quarters in 1925. The light itself was electrified in 1936, and automated in 1955. As the light was automated, positions for three keepers slowly dwindled down to two and then one. No longer housing lighthouse families by the 1960s, the keepers' house was rented to local residents. Eventually it was declared surplus, and St. Johns County bought it in 1970. In that year the house suffered a devastating fire at the hands of an unknown arsonist.
St. Francis Barracks is a historic structure constructed of coquina stone located on Marine Street in St. Augustine, Florida, named in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. The barracks were constructed between 1724 and 1755 by friars of the Order of St. Francis, to replace a series of wooden buildings which had been destroyed by the ravages of the tropical climate in La Florida and by fire, both accidental fires and occasional intentional ones, such as when the city was razed by the English in 1702.
The barracks were turned into a military structure by the British in 1763, after Florida became a British possession at the conclusion of the French and Indian War. At that time, the Franciscan friars vacated St. Augustine, along with a majority of the other Spanish residents.
The name St. Francis Barracks also came to be applied to the larger military reservation which developed around the barracks on the shore of the Matanzas River. There are several additional historic structures, to include senior military officer housing and The King's Bakery, the latter being the only extant structure in St. Augustine constructed entirely within the twenty-year period of the British occupation.
When Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine for the Spanish Crown, Jesuit priests were among the initial colonists to provide for the spiritual needs of the settlers and to help convert the native Timucua Indians to Christianity. In the 1570s the Jesuits were replaced by friars of the Order of St. Francis who were allocated land in 1588 at the southern end of the city for their monastery and church, Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion (Our Lady of the Conception).
The original structures on the site were built of logs and palm thatch roofs. Throughout the years a succession of buildings were constructed as replacements. The structures were susceptible to rotting in the humid sub-tropical climate and were highly flammable. In 1702 all the structures in St. Augustine with the exception of the Castillo de San Marcos were burned to the ground following the siege by Carolina Governor James Moore. After this, it was decided to rebuild the monastery with the same durable coquina used in the construction of the fort. Construction finally began in 1735 using coquina stone quarried at the King's Quarry located on Anastasia Island across Matanzas Bay from St. Augustine.
The Franciscan friars lived at the monastery until the British took possession of Florida in exchange for occupied Havana which they seized from the Spanish in the French and Indian War.
Almost the entire population of Catholic St. Augustine left the city upon the British taking control in 1763 including the Franciscan friars and many of their Native American converts. The British, a large majority of whom were Protestant converted the friars former living quarters into military barracks for the troops stationed at the newly christened Fort St. Marks, the anglicized version of the Castillo de San Marco.
During the British period of occupation, the military constructed an additional wooden barracks behind the coquina stone, St. Francis Barracks. They also constructed The King's Bakery, a coquina stone structure used for baking the bread for the city's garrison. This structure, which has been used as a garage by the Florida National Guard since 1930, is located perpendicular to the barracks across Marine Street. It is believed to be the only structure surviving in St. Augustine built entirely during the British Period (1763–1784).
After signing the Treaty of Paris, the British who conceded defeat in the American Revolution agreed to relinquish control of the Florida Territory, restoring Spain's possession of the land. Upon returning the Spanish military continued to use the St. Francis Barracks, as a military installation and troop barracks. During this period known as the Second Spanish Period (1763–1821) the wooden barracks built by the British were torn down.
St. Francis Barracks came under control of the United States Army when the United States gained possession of Florida in 1821. The Barracks would remain an active U.S. Army installation until it was deactivated in 1900, with the exception of one year between 1861 and 1862 when it, like the rest of St. Augustine was under control of the Confederate States of America.
In 1828, a portion of the southern end of the St. Francis Barracks military reservation was set aside as a post cemetery. In 1842, the U.S. Army soldiers who perished in the 1835 Dade Massacre in present-day Sumter County, Florida, were re-interred here under 3 coquina pyramid shaped monuments. Over 1,300 other U.S. casualties of the Second Seminole War would later be buried here. This cemetery would later be redesignated the St. Augustine National Cemetery and would contain U.S. military personnel from the American Civil War, the Spanish–American War, World War I and World War II, as well as ten British and British Commonwealth military personnel from World War II before it was closed to further interments.
At the start of the Civil War, there was only one U.S. Army ordnance sergeant on duty at St. Francis Barracks, Sergeant Henry Douglas, who was responsible not only for the Barracks but also for nearby Fort Marion (the American name for Castillo de San Marcos). On January 7, 1861, before Florida's formal secession from the Union, members of a newly formed local militia unit named the St. Augustine Blues went to the St. Francis Barracks to demand the keys to the fort. The U.S. Army sergeant complied with the stipulation that he receive a receipt for the fort, which he was given.
SGT Douglas would later report that, "All military stores at this place were seized this morning by order of the Governor of the State of Florida. A company of volunteer soldiers marched to the barracks and took possession of me, and demanded peaceable possession of the keys of the fort and magazine."
The U.S. Army deactivated Fort Marion and St. Francis Barracks in 1900 and leased the Barracks to the Florida State Troops, the forerunner of the present day Florida National Guard, in 1907. St. Francis Barracks was formally given to the State of Florida for use as the State Arsenal in 1921 by an act of Congress. After receiving use of the Barracks via lease in 1907, the buildings were not immediately occupied. In 1915, St. Francis Barracks was gutted in a fire, however, the original coquina stone walls remained standing. The building was rebuilt in 1922 using the original walls.
Today, St. Francis Barracks, also known as the State Arsenal, is home to the Headquarters, Florida National Guard, headed by the Army or Air Force officer serving as The Adjutant General (TAG) of Florida, and the TAG's associated staff. It is also serves as the organizational headquarters for the Florida Army National Guard and the Florida Air National Guard, headed by the Assistant Adjutant General – Army (ATAG – Army) and the Assistant Adjutant General – Air Force (ATAG – Air), respectively, and their associated staffs.
In 1874, the city of St. Augustine, Florida opened a "subscription library". The library was called the St. Augustine Free Public Library, located at 12 Aviles Street in downtown St. Augustine, Florida, now known as the Segui-Kirby Smith House. It currently serves as a research library for the Saint Augustine Historical Society. Patrons gave money to help buy books for the library, and there was no charge to check out items.
In 1895-96 the state of Florida library system reported the following statistics of note: Libraries reporting (13) [5 general, 2 schools, 5 colleges, 1 law], Number of Volumes for patrons available (43,506), Free libraries in the state (3). In 1895-96 only one free library in Florida having 3,000 volumes or more was reported (4,500) and was the Free Public Library in St. Augustine. The Name of the Librarian on record was John C. Wilson, president and the library reported that (1000) books had been issued during the year for home use.
The King's Bakery is a coquina stone structure in St. Augustine, Florida, built during the British colonial period in the state (1763–1783). The building, located on Marine Street, with the rear facing Matanzas Bay, was constructed to supply bread to the British troops quartered across the street at the St. Francis Barracks, a building which formerly housed Franciscan friars, during the First Spanish Period (1565–1763). The monastery was used by the British as military barracks.
The bakery, believed to be the only structure remaining in St. Augustine built entirely during the British period, has been used since then as a storeroom for flour, a military hospital, and offices.
The old bakery building is part of the St. Francis Barracks military compound, which since 1907 has served as the headquarters of the Florida National Guard. In 1934 it was converted for use as a garage.
The parish of Trinity, St. Augustine was founded in 1821 soon after Florida became a United States territory. Trinity is one of the seven original parishes when the Episcopal Diocese of Florida was received into union with the General Convention in 1838.
The first church building was begun in 1830 and services began on June 30, 1831. Constructed of coquina, a local shell stone that was also used to build the Castillo de San Marcos, the original structure was 36 feet (11 m) wide by 50 feet (15 m) long. Bishop Nathaniel Bowen of South Carolina formally consecrated Trinity Church on June 5, 1834.
Growth was slow but steady in the years following and small additions and improvements were made to the church. Three stained glass windows were added just prior to the American Civil War. Although there was only one major battle in Florida, the war took a terrible toll on the state, the Diocese of Florida and Trinity.
The next 50 years saw a slow recovery by St. Augustine and Trinity, with continued work by a committed laity that raised funds to keep the church going through a succession of Rectors. The Rev. C M. Sturges arrived in 1895 and determined that the church building was outmoded, too small and in dire need of repair. That began a six-year effort to obtain plans and funding to enlarge the church structure. Work began in early 1902 and on January 17, 1903, the first services were held in the “new” church, a cruciform structure, neo-gothic in appearance that seated 300 parishioners. A new era had begun.
he 20th century brought profound changes to St. Augustine including a substantial increase in population and a steady rise in winter visitors – many of whom chose Trinity as their church. The Reverend L. Fitz-James Hindry served as Rector from 1904 until 1936. His tenure saw the formation of many lay organizations - the Altar Guild, Daughters of the king, St. Catherine’s Guild, and others – all devoted to working with the church on a variety of projects.
The Rev. Charles Seymour was called to Trinity 1949 and served until 1964. By 1955, a two-story education facility and Parish Hall were added. The Seymour years were a time of significant physical changes to Trinity and marked an upturn in the number of communicants to more than 500 by 1959. In 1960, after a successful stewardship campaign, Trinity Parish went from a relatively small church to a full complex with a new parish hall, kitchen, classrooms, administrative offices and a nursery. Architecturally, the new facilities and cloistered walkways complemented and continued the neo-gothic features of the historic church building.
The Rev. Canon Walter T. Saffran served as rector during the 1980s and into the 1990s and membership continued to increase. St. Monica Chapter of the Daughters of the King was established February 18, 1996. When Father Saffran retired in 1997, he was named Trinity Episcopal Parish Rector Emeritus. Fr. David Weidner served Trinity from 2005-2018. The present Rector is the Rev. Matt Marino.
The hotel was opened in 1888 by Franklin W. Smith, a notable Victorian architecture enthusiast and social reformer who earned a place in Florida history for interesting Henry Flagler in investing in the state. The construction material was poured concrete, of which Franklin Smith was a leading experimenter. The original exterior finish was natural, leaving horizontal pour marks visible, and matching other grand Flagler era structures in downtown St. Augustine. Unfortunately, the exterior was altered by covering with a modern material (stucco) in the 1960s. The architectural style was Moorish Revival and Spanish Baroque Revival, in which Smith was also a pioneer promoter. His own winter home, Villa Zorayda, just a block to the west, was the first Moorish Revival building in St. Augustine. The hotel's Sun Parlor was the most notable interior room, but it was gutted after the hotel closed.
Soon after completing the hotel, Smith ran into financial difficulties and sold the hotel, including all fixtures, furnishings, linen, and all other chattel, for $325,000 to oil and railroad tycoon Henry Flagler. Upon purchasing the hotel, Henry Flagler renamed the Casa Monica the Cordova Hotel. Flagler, a founder, with John D. Rockefeller, of the Standard Oil Company, already owned two hotels in St. Augustine, the Ponce de Leon Hotel (now Flagler College) and the Hotel Alcazar (now City Hall and the Lightner Museum). From 1888 to 1902, the hotel featured parties, balls, fairs and charity events.
The famous travel agency "Ask Mr. Foster" had its headquarters in the hotel. It was started by Ward G. Foster of St. Augustine, became a national business, and was owned for a time in the 20th century by Peter Ueberroth, one time Commissioner of Baseball. The building once featured an historic marker as the birthplace of the agency, but it has been removed in recent years.
In 1902, a short bridge was constructed over Cordova Street that connected the second floors of the Cordova Hotel and the Hotel Alcazar. At the completion of the bridge, the Cordova Hotel was again renamed, this time to Alcazar Annex. In 1903, the Alcazar and Alcazar Annex were considered one hotel and advertised as "enlarged and redecorated". In 1932, the conjoined parts of the hotel were closed due to the Great Depression. In 1945, the bridge between the Annex portion and the Alcazar Hotel was removed.
In February 1962, St. Johns County Commission voted to purchase the former Casa Monica Hotel for $250,000 for use as the St. Johns County Courthouse. In 1964 the lobby of the then-vacant hotel was used to house police dogs that were used against civil rights demonstrators during the mass campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Robert Hayling, see St. Augustine movement. The renovation took over six years to complete. It was finally dedicated as a courthouse in May 1968, and filled that role until the 1990s, housing government offices and archives as well as courtrooms. A notable feature of the courthouse were murals by the artist Hugo Ohlms, whose distinctive work was also featured in the nearby Catholic Cathedral and at the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge (another civil rights landmark, where the arrest of Mrs. Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, while trying to be served in a racially integrated group, made national headlines in 1964). The Ohlms murals were removed when the courthouse was remodeled into its second incarnation as a hotel. Also removed were the stained glass scales of justice that had been in the quatrefoil window over the main door.
The González–Álvarez House is located in a residential area south of downtown St. Augustine, on the north side of St. Francis Street between Charlotte and Marine Streets. It is a two-story structure, its first floor built of coquina and its upper level framed in wood with a clapboarded exterior. It is covered by a hip roof finished with wooden shingles. The building is reflective of multiple periods of alteration and enlargement, during different periods of colonial administration.
The land on which this house stands has been occupied since the 17th century, when a building is documented to have been standing here. The present house's earliest period of construction dates to about 1723, when the first floor was built, and it was documented as being occupied by Tomás González y Hernández, an artilleryman at the Castillo de San Marcos, and his family. The design of this house is one that was adopted by Spanish colonial settlers to deal with local living conditions and available building materials. It was built of readily available coquina limestone, with its main thick walls oriented east–west, and has an open covered loggia on the east side. The latter allows prevailing southeasterly winds to cool the structure, while the thick walls provide insulation from hot weather. The interior floors are made of tabby concrete.
After the British took over Florida in 1763, the González family left for Cuba. In 1774 the house was purchased by Major Joseph Peavett, an Englishman, who added the wood-frame second story, and put glass windows into openings previously only enclosed by wooden shutters. It was further enlarged by the third owner, Geronimo Alvarez, who added a two-story wing built of coquina. The house was taken over by the St. Augustine Historical Society in 1918, which undertook its restoration to a late 19th-century appearance in 1959–60, reversing a number of intervening alterations.
The O'Reilly House, known officially known as the Father Miguel O'Reilly House Museum, and also known as the House of Don Lorenzo de Leon, is a historic home in St. Augustine, Florida. It is located at 131 Aviles Street. On October 15, 1974, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The museum's exhibits focus on the Catholic heritage of St. Augustine.
The first record of a building at this lot appears in a Spanish map dated January 22, 1764. The building was most likely used as a dwelling during the First Spanish Period. During St. Augustine's British Period (1763-1783), the house belonged to a British Captain, Henry Skinner, and changed hands several times during the British occupation. St. Augustine was ceded back to the Spanish with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. At this time, a Menorcan man named Bernardo Segui bought the lot from Pablo Cortina; the home had a first floor made of coquina and a wooden second floor. The lot also accommodated a small two-room building on Artillery Lane. Bernardo and his wife had six children and most likely made additions to the dwelling.
In 1824, Bernardo Segui's widow rented out the house to Judge Joseph Lee Smith, a judge in the Supreme Court of Florida. Judge Smith's son Edmund Kirby Smith, who would go on to become a Confederate general, was born there. The Smith family later became full owners of the building. In 1863, the Union occupiers of St. Augustine banished Edmund's mother, Frances Kirby Smith, from the city on suspicion of spying for the Confederacy. Alexander Darnes, the son of the enslaved woman Violet Pinkney, also lived in the house. In 1855, Darnes left St. Augustine to serve as valet to Edmund Kirby Smith during his military service in the Western Territories and throughout the Civil War. After the South lost the war, Darnes went on to earn a medical degree in 1880 at Howard University, moved back to Florida, and became one of the first African American doctors in the state. In 1887 the Smiths sold the house to E.P. Dismukes. Mr. and Mrs. John L. Wilson bought the home in 1894. According to the will of the Wilsons, the Segui-Kirby Smith House was to be used as a library for the citizens of St. Augustine. At first it was the property of the St. Augustine Library Association. In 1894 a public library moved into the house, from the second story of what is now the Governor's House Museum and Cultural Center.
Outside the house on Aviles Street stands a historical marker designating the home as one of the thirty-six remaining Spanish Colonial homes in St. Augustine. Maria Kirby-Smith, great-granddaughter of Edmund Kirby Smith, completed a bronze statue of the general and of Darnes titled "Sons of St. Augustine" in 2004. The statue stands in the courtyard of the Segui-Kirby Smith House today (2020). The house and its outbuildings are used by the St. Augustine Historical Society to serve as the location for its research library, archives, and collection storage. The space includes a public reading room.
During the British occupation of St. Augustine 1763-1783 a Scottish carpenter named William Watson purchased and remodeled the building into a dwelling. The hospital was a three part facility consisting of Hospital West (constructed in the First Spanish Period), Hospital East (constructed during the British Period) and the Apothecary in the William Watson House (constructed in the British Period). These three parts plus their outbuildings and gardens functioned as a hospital complex during the Second Spanish Period. Aviles Street (which runs between the two wings of the hospital) was called Hospital Street until it was renamed in 1924.
The hospital was strictly a military facility; only military were treated there and only military personnel worked on the staff.
Hospital West burned in 1818, and the remaining parts of the hospital stayed in operation until two years into the American Territorial Period and officially closed down in 1823. Hospital East was destroyed in the fire of 1895. The Watson House still stands today.
Ximenez-Fatio House Museum is one of the best-preserved and most authentic Second Spanish Period (1783-1821) residential buildings in St. Augustine, Florida. In 1973, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was designated a Florida Heritage Landmark in 2012.
The museum complex sits just south of the city's central Plaza de la Constitución at 20 Aviles Street (formerly Hospital Street), the oldest archaeologically documented street in the United States. It is located at the center of Old Town, the city's oldest continuously occupied community.
Since 1939, the property has been privately owned and managed by The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of Florida (NSCDA-FL). Through their efforts, it was restored and interpreted to reflect its function as a fashionable boarding house during Florida's first tourist boom, which began after 1821.
The property is a historic house museum, furnished and presented to tell stories of the visitors who lodged there, the women who owned and managed it, and how people lived during Florida's territorial period.
The two-story main house was built by Andres Ximenez (an alternate spelling of Jimenez), a merchant of Spanish birth who married Juana Pellicer, daughter of Francisco Pellicer, a leader of the Minorcan community in St. Augustine. The property's modern name references Ximenez as well as the last historic owner of record: Louisa Fatio (FAY-she-oh), who ran the boarding house as Miss Fatio's. Louisa purchased the house in 1855, becoming the last of three successive women owners during its years as a boarding house. Their success contributes to the historical significance of the property, because this was a time when few American women owned property in their own names or managed a respectable business.
The house's adaptability to commercial activities is due in part to its size and central location near the plaza and the bayfront. Andres Ximenez built the structure to accommodate his family upstairs and support them through undertakings housed downstairs. His wife Juana probably assisted him in running a general store, tavern, billiard table and lottery. The Ximenez family did not occupy the house for long. By 1806, both parents and two of their five minor children had died. For a number of years following, Juana's father managed the property on his grandchildren's behalf.
The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, in which Spain settled a border dispute and ceded Florida to the United States, brought big changes to St. Augustine. The only city on the Florida peninsula, it became a destination for curiosity-seekers and consumptives on doctors' orders to escape cold northern winters. The presence of Castillo de San Marcos, a coquina fort built by the Spanish and now controlled by the U.S. military and renamed Fort Marion, brought a larger military presence to town. A decade after Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, the need for more and better visitor accommodations became pressing. Local residents began advertising rooms for rent with board (meals) included. This kind of lodging was in most cases a step above staying at a hotel.
While small-scale boarding houses were the norm, the times were favorable for a more ambitious approach. In 1830, Margaret Cook completed the process of purchasing the Ximenez House from its heirs. Cook had relocated to St. Augustine from Charleston with her second husband Samuel in 1821. A widow again by 1830, she had the freedom not routinely granted to married women of her day to transact business in her own name. She secured these rights through legal documents signed by her husband before his death.
Architect Herschel Shepard verified that the house was converted to add extra bedrooms during Cook's ownership. Cook hired Eliza Whitehurst — a widowed friend from Charleston who may have also been a close relative — and opened the house to boarders. Under Eliza's management, "Mrs. Whitehurst's boarding house' developed a reputation for high standards and good food. One guest noted, "...we were very fortunate in getting board at Mrs. Whitehurst's, considered the best in town." In 1835, 23 guests were recorded as having stayed at the house, with the majority coming from the northeast.
Eliza Whitehurst succumbed to illness in 1838, as did Margaret Cook's daughter. That year, Cook sold the boarding house to Sarah Petty Anderson for $4,000. She also sold Anderson an adjacent piece of property that she had purchased at auction the year before. This piece of land measured 57½ feet along Green Street (now Cadiz) to the west of the boarding house.
Anderson and her husband George were among the many newcomers to Florida in the early 1820s. Anderson's mother, Frances Kerr, had purchased 450 acres of land west of the Tomoka River in 1818 for a plantation known as the Ferry. In Kerr's will dated September 2, 1820, Anderson and her husband were named the heirs of the Ferry plantation. In 1829, the Andersons bought Mount Oswald, a 1,900-acre plantation at the junction of the Halifax and Tomoka rivers. They later bought a third plantation, which was burned during the Second Seminole War. The ruins of this Dunlawton Plantation and Sugar Mill still stand on Nova Road, west of Port Orange, Florida. The site was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
By the end of the 1830s, Anderson was a widow living in St. Augustine. In the early 1840s, she hired Louisa Fatio to manage the Ximenez House as a boarding house. She retained Fatio as manager until 1855. That year, Fatio purchased the house for $3,000.
Louisa Fatio was the granddaughter of Francis Philip Fatio, co-founder and later sole owner of the 10,000-acre New Switzerland plantation on the St. Johns River west of St. Augustine, as well as two other large properties in North Florida. She was highly educated for a woman of her time. In 1812, the family's plantation house was attacked and partially burned during the East Florida Patriot War. After they rebuilt between 1822 and 1824, Louisa — who never married — helped her frail stepmother run the household.
The New Switzerland plantation was torched a second time during the Second Seminole War, which began in 1835. In 1836, Fatio moved to St. Augustine. The city was filled with military personnel and refugees from the war, and she found work managing boarding houses with her sister Eliza. Fatio's reputation for fine food and accommodations grew. First-hand accounts, such as Charles Lanman's Adventures in the Wilds of the United States, note her reputation as a hostess: "From personal experience I can speak of one…of these establishments kept by Miss Fatio, a most estimable and popular lady; and if the others are as home-like and comfortable as this, the ancient city may well be proud of her houses for the accommodation of travelers and invalids."
Under Fatio's management, the house on Aviles Street became known as Miss Fatio's. The establishment was a fixture in St. Augustine until her death in 1875. The Fatio House is a setting in Constance Fenimore Woolson's fictional story about visitors to St. Augustine. Titled "The Ancient City," it was published in two parts by Harper's New Monthly Magazine in 1874 and 1875.
Sometime after 1855, Fatio added a second floor of bedrooms above the one-story wing on the north end of the main house. For years, experts thought the addition was completed during Margaret Cook's ownership in the 1830s. The theory was overturned in 2009, when dendrochronology experts from the University of Florida and the University of Tennessee dated the wood in the framing of the upper-floor wing to the latter half of the 1850s.
Eugenia Price made Louisa Fatio a major character in her 1965 (commemorative edition 2008) novel, Margaret's Story, the third volume in Price's "Florida Trilogy." One of its settings is Fatio's boarding house in St. Augustine.
The historic Fornells building in downtown St. Augustine was demolished Thursday night, hours after the two-story building partially collapsed.
As crews tore down the more than 200-year-old structure on 62 Hypolita Street, some of the spectators felt their memories get crushed.
"It's really awful," said Diana Hamann who lived in the home in the 1960s. "It's very sad and my brother and I are very broken up about it because for us it's very personal, this is our childhood home."
St. Augustine is rich in history. The Timucua’s, a Native American people, lived in this region for more than 1000 years before Europeans arrived. In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, discovered Florida and claimed it for Spain. In August 1565, Spanish Admiral General Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles found the beautiful region now known as St. Augustine, FL. Much happened in the centuries to come developing St. Augustine into the beautiful historic city it is today.
The historic Peña-Peck House Museum and Gift Shop , is one of the 35 remaining First Spanish Period buildings (1565 - 1763) in St. Augustine. It is a coquina stone and frame building not to be missed in downtown St. Augustine. Built circa 1750 by order of King Ferdinand VI for Spanish Royal Treasurer Juan Estevan de Peña, this house nestled on the corner of St. George Street and Treasury Street remains much as it was in 1931 when it was left to the city of St. Augustine.
The house is open for tours and available for special events in our award-winning ornamental gardens. Tour the historic Peña-Peck House to gain a better understanding of the history and life of those that lived here through the centuries and the culture of the times. View the beautiful artwork and historical furnishings collected through the centuries.
Special events take place in our gardens on a regular basis. Need a picture-perfect outdoor location for your graduation party, an outdoor garden wedding never to be forgotten or a fun, central and gated place for your rehearsal dinner or welcome party? Then look no further. The highly sought after historic Peña-Peck House Museum and Gift Shop is one of the oldest homes in St. Augustine with a perfect location, loggia, courtyard and gorgeous grounds and gardens for your memory-making event.
Architect Fred A. Henderich was a prominent designer in St. Augustine known for introducing the Mediterranean Revival style to St. Augustine at the turn of the 19th century and pioneering restorative architecture on many buildings after the great fire of 1914. In 1908, he designed what would be the final remnant of St. Augustine’s cigar industry: the Solla-Carcaba Cigar Factory. The top three floors were designated for cigar making while the ground floor was for tobacco storage.
Since the 1830s, St. Augustine had established a minor handmade Cuban cigar manufacturing industry. When the Ten Years War with Spain broke out in 1868, some Cuban immigrants made their way here while others went to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Key West, Tampa, and Europe.
P.F. Carcaba was a native of Spain and cigar manufacturer out of Cincinnati who opened a St. Augustine factory in 1893. The first plant burned down in 1895 and a vacant school building was offered to keep production going. Carcaba was one of St. Augustine’s principal cigar producers, making about 5,000,000 cigars a year by 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt visited that year and was gifted three boxes of Carcaba’s cigars wrapped in velvet, trimmed in gold, and fastened with silver clasps.
After Carcaba’s passing in 1906, business moved to Tampa and St. Augustine’s industry took a major blow. The St. Augustine Board of Trade began negotiations to reestablish a local cigar factory to employ 100 workers and money was raised by public subscription plus donations from banks, labor establishments, and investors to construct the building by February of 1909. The factory opened but could not meet the 8 million annual production rate stipulated by the agreement. With that, optimism faded and assets were purchased by Pamies-Arango & Co. The firm was able to increase production and jobs, making cigar production St. Augustine’s second largest industry (behind the FEC Railway) by 1920. After World War I, cigarettes became more popular with aggressive marketing and the newly fast-paced lifestyle associated with cars, planes, and jazz. By 1937, only three cigar manufacturers remained in St. Augustine and Pamies was reduced to a small operation running out of the owner’s home.
Today, the historic building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and operates as office space for local businesses. Plans for repurposing the building as an upscale boutique hotel were recently announced.
The Xavier Lopez House is a historic home in St. Augustine, Florida, United States. It is located at 93½ King Street (U.S. Business Route 1). It was built in 1903 in the Queen Anne/Victorian style, which is atypical of many structures in St. Augustine, most of which are in the Spanish/Mission Revival style. The house is located behind a trio of one-story Spanish colonial-style mortgage lending offices, all of which are addressed as being at 93 King Stret.
In 1980, the house was restored by "The Mussallem Family" with help of a local construction company. On July 1, 1993, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The City Gate marking the north side of St. George Street, holds more significance than merely being two pillars standing next to each other. In 1808, St. Augustine residents built the structure entirely out of coquina and used it as a line of defense against attacks.
It was historically used for access into the city and protection for people living there at the time. Visitors can now walk through the gate in the same way in which many have done before them.
The City Gate is across the street from the Castillo de San Marcos, so be sure to see both important landmarks.
The Old Florida Museum at the Florida Agricultural Museum offers five unique immersive programs for student groups that are both entertaining and educational. Students experience Florida living through the struggles and successes of people during different periods of history. All programs follow the Sunshine State Standards.
Each program is 45 to 55 minutes long and groups may choose to participate in one, some, or all of the programs. The program area fits up to 30 students comfortably. Multiple classes can be at the museum simultaneously.
The field trip kicks off with a guide that greets the students upon arrival and orients them before they enter the museum. This costumed guide then shares an interactive history of the time period. After, students make a project that they take home. Finally, students participate in a variety of activity stations.
For more than 20 years, home school programming has also been available.
Group reservations are required for educational programs. School groups can check available dates, or make reservations, by calling (904) 824-8874.
"In 1784 when the Spanish returned, the Minorcan settlers brought to Florida by the British stayed. Their descendants too remained in 1821 when Florida became American. Two Minorcan brothers, Joseph and Peter Antonio Manucy, owned the house in 1838, adding the second story and the balcony. Dona Catalina Lambias, whose name the structure bears, bought it in 1854 and she and her family owned it for 65 years."
In a 1764 Spanish map, the lot where the Cerveau House would come to stand was described as being vacant. A map from the following year described the lot as belonging to Jesse Fish, a British agent. Most likely there was no building on the site until the later stages of St. Augustine's British Period. A 1788 map shows the existence of a timber frame house in poor condition.
From the town's inventory and assessment of property taken in 1790, we learn that at 26 Cuna Street stood, “a wooden house covered with palm belonging to Jose Buchany on the King’s lot.” Jose Buchany had borrowed money from a Miguel Segui and in 1803, the Spanish government bestowed the title of the house to Segui's heirs since Buchany had failed to pay his mortgage.
The last owner of the house before it was purchased by preservation organizations was a Blanche Cerveau.
Archaeological excavations in the 1970s showed the site of the Wakeman House to hold burials dating back to the 16th century. These burials were located near the Catholic church of the time. A further excavation from 1972 showed burials dating back to the 18th century at this site, which could have been linked to the nearby Spanish Military Hospital, just south of the Wakeman House.
Around 1852, a structure was built on this site known as the City Hotel, owned by Seth M. Wakeman, a merchant from Connecticut who also operated a grocery store in it. A photograph taken during the Civil War shows us that the Wakeman House was occupied by Union soldiers during that time. There is a photograph from the 1880s that shows Wakeman's building functioning as a store.
The 1884 Sanborn Insurance Map depicts a three-story dry-goods store and a "Gentleman's Store" on this site that was out of business by 1888. By 1893 it was a veneered concrete building known as Lynn's Hotel, which was the Chautauqua Hotel by 1910.
The original home was built in 1720 and was listed as the property of Juan Garcia Martinez Gallegos on a 1764 map of St. Augustine. By 1788, another map shows that original structure had been replaced by a timber-frame house built by Lucia Escalona.
The Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board reconstructed the Gallegos home in 1962 on its original site. It was their third completed project. They used authentic historical methods of construction, building the structure of an oyster-shell concrete mix known as tabby. The home only has two rooms and a flat roof. It demonstrates typical architecture of the First Spanish Period in that it has no entry from the street but rather through a courtyard on the side for security and privacy. There are no openings on the north wall, which during colonial times would have helped to keep out winds. The Gallegos House served as the Information Center for the Preservation Board's Museum village, San Agustin Antiguo.
A 1764 Spanish map describes the structure at this site as a “house of boards” owned by Lorenzo Gómez, who had a wife, Catarina Perdomo, and three children. There is no documentation for when the house was originally built or who the former owner was. The home originally contained two rooms and a sleeping loft. A coquina walled well in the yard was the water source for the family.
Lorenzo and his family moved to Havana in 1763 following the British occupation of East Florida. The house was left in the charge of British agent Jesse Fish and eventually torn down in St. Augustine’s British Period, most likely for firewood. The site remained empty until the first half of the 19th century.
The Joaneda house was built around the year 1806 out of wood and was originally owned by Juan Joaneda, a Minorcan fish farmer. The house had a wooden floor. Joaneda then rebuilt the house out of coquina and sold it for a profit to a Juan Gonzáles Montes de Oca. Around 1809, Montes de Oca sold the house to the son-in-law of Juan Joaneda. The house's main entrance was through the yard and the entire property was enclosed by a wall and fence. The wall was reconstructed in 1976. There were originally three rooms on the first floor with an open porch on the south side.
In 1888 the building was used as a tailor shop and the main entrance moved to the street. It later became a Minorcan restaurant. In the 1920s the Montgomery sisters turned the Joaneda House into a gift shop. They enclosed the porch and built a six-room addition to the south that doubled the size of the building. They also put in a concrete tile floor. In the 1970s the house was "restored" by Elizabeth Morley Towers of Jacksonville and used as a part-time local residence during her lifetime. It has since been turned to commercial use.
According to a Spanish map of 1763, there were two lots at the site of the Pellicer-De Burgo property. The north lot had belonged to Lucas Escovedo and the south lot had belonged to Prudencia Ansures but the two owners left St. Augustine as the British took over the colony after the 1763 Treaty of Paris. At the beginning of St. Augustine's British Period, agent Jesse Fish was put in charge of selling the two lots. He sold them to Francisco Pellicer and José Peso de Burgo in 1780. Pellicer's wife and two youngest children died shortly after he bought the lot.
In 2000, Francisco Pellicer was nominated to become part of the Great Floridians Program. Pellicer Creek, just south of St. Augustine, is named after Francisco Pellicer.
Minorcan Pellicer and Corsican Peso de Burgo had been members of Dr. Andrew Turnbull's New Smyrna colony that eventually ended up in St. Augustine. Pellicer was a master carpenter and had built Turnbull's plantation home. Allegedly Pellicer was one of the men who came to Governor Tonyn in 1777 charging Turnbull with mistreatment of fellow colonists. In 1784 Peso de Burgo was identified as a storekeeper and half owner of a sloop.
A 1788 map describes both houses as being wooden. Both houses were one room and shared a wall. There was also a small outbuilding on the lot. Pellicer built his own house and potentially Peso de Burgo's as well. Peso de Burgo moved out of his home before 1791 and rented it out to lodgers.
In 1787 Francisco Pellicer sold his home to Greek fisherman and sailor Demetrios Fundulakis and his wife Maria Bros. Peso de Burgo sold his house in 1791 to Juan Sánchez, the chief master caulker of the royal works, who also rented out the house for income. He sold it in 1792 to John Martin Struder, who in turn sold the house in the mid-1790s to a Minorcan farmer named Pedro Fusha.
At some point prior to 1831, when a map shows the lots to be vacant, the two houses were demolished. One Peter Arnau owned both lots at that time.
The Ribera House is located at 22 St. George Street in St. Augustine, Florida. It is a reconstruction of the home that originally stood on this site during the First Spanish Period (1565-1764) of St. Augustine.
The Rodríguez House is located at 58 St. George Street in St. Augustine, Florida. It is a reconstructed structure where there was once a tabby house during Florida's First Spanish Period (1565-1763). It is part of the St. Augustine Town Plan Historic District.
The Salcedo House was a dwelling constructed in St. Augustine's First Spanish Period (1565–1763). By the end of this period the house belonged to Alfonsa de Avero. Avero, her sisters living nearby, and their families left St. Augustine with other Spaniards when Florida was transferred to the British with the 1763 Treaty of Paris. During the British Period, Thomas Stone, Leonard Cecil, and Robert Johnston owned the property, consecutively. When Spain regained Florida with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Pedro Jose Salcedo, Captain of the Royal Corps of Artillery, bought the lot.
From 1796 to 1801, general from the island of Santo Domingo and early leader of the Haitian Revolution Georges Biassou lived in this house. In 1805, Minorcan fisherman and farmer Pablo Sabate bought the house.
The Sánchez de Ortigosa House shows up on city maps in 1763 and 1765 as being a stone building belonging to José Sánchez de Ortigosa. Sánchez de Ortigosa was from Ronda, Spain. He married a local woman, Juana Theodora Pérez, with whom he had nine children. He was a privateer.
By 1788, during Florida's British Period (1763-1783), the stone house had been razed and a wooden house stood in its place. Restoration Commission Director Earle Newton stated that First Spanish Period homes did not last because the English tended to tear them down for use of the building materials and replace them with wooden structures.
The Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board constructed the building in 1964 to be a typical shop built by Anglo-American refugees from the American Revolution in the 1780s. It is a wooden framed building consisting of a gable roof, wood floors, wood shingles, and a brick foundation.
One half of the reconstructed building was put on display as a silversmith's shop. During the era of the living history museum San Augustín Antiguo in the 1960s and the 1970s, the room was full of iron tools such as anvils and hammers. The Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board furnished the museum space with modern reproductions as well, such as a set of dies for shaping silver wire, a work bench, and a bellows beside the fireplace where casting was done.
The Triay House is a historic property located at 31 St. George Street in St. Augustine, Florida. It is a reconstruction of the First Spanish Period structure that stood on the site.
As lead carpenter, he was labeled as an overseer and was allegedly a harsh taskmaster. He eventually moved to St. Augustine and lived next door to Father Pedro Camps, to whom he charged the task of selling his property when he and the British left St. Augustine at the end of St. Augustine's British Period. In St. Augustine he practiced his craftsmanship by purchasing and renovating homes. In this manner, he earned his wealth, became a rich planter, and established an estate on the property.
William Watson bought the property where his house in downtown St. Augustine later stood in 1779 from James Penman, a British attorney and friend of Andrew Turnbull who left East Florida following a series of disputes with then Governor Patrick Tonyn. On this land he converted a large stable building into a seven-room convalescent home. He also built a two-story wooden framed house where he and his family lived. Their residence in the house was short lived; when Spain regained Florida from England in 1783, Watson and his family returned to England. All of the properties he owned around St. Augustine were left to Father Pedro Camps. The Watson House became the property of Martín Mateo Hernández, a young Minorcan immigrant under the Father's care.
After the heirs of Martín Hernández died in 1802, the Watson House became part of the Spanish Military Hospital complex on what is now Aviles Street, serving as the apothecary. It is believed that the house burned down in St. Augustine's fire of 1887. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps show the lot empty from 1894 to 1899, when a stable building was constructed on the property.
The Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board reconstructed the Watson House in 1968 as an example of British Period architecture. Today it serves as residential property for University of Florida Historic St. Augustine, Inc. (UFHSA).
The Wells Print Shop was located at 27 Cuna Street in St. Augustine, Florida. It operated as part of the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board's 18th century museum village, San Agustín Antiguo, demonstrating the colonial printmaking process.
The Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board reconstructed the Wells Print Shop in 1968 on Cuna Street. The original Wells printing press owned by William and John was located on Treasury Lane. The all-wooden shop was constructed using board-and-batten building method, which the British settlers in St. Augustine preferred for its quick construction and ease of repair. The building is 220 square feet.
Inside the print shop was a replica of the type of printing press used towards the end of the 18th century. The press was operated daily to demonstrate the printing process to visitors, but the Preservation Board also used it to make reproductions of historic St. Augustine maps and replicas of the East Florida Gazette, which were sold as souvenirs.
Today the site once occupied by the Wells Print Shop operates as a jewelry store.
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