Quote:
Originally Posted by photoLith
(Post 5600280)
Wow, loving all that 1920s Spanish colonial revival architecture they have there, and that fort looks 16th century or so, amazing!
|
Try 1800s. Henry Flagler built some of the largest structures there in the 1880s. Many of the surrounding houses date to the 1700s with the oldest standing dating to the first few years of the 1700s. The present fort dates to the 1600s, but there has been a fort there since 1565. There is another fort guarding the Matanzas Inlet 10 miles to the south and a fort in Jacksonville on the St. Johns dating to 1564 (the city was settled by the French a year before the Spanish settled St. Augie, and the fort there is actually a recreation). There is also a Union fort that is really really large north of Jacksonville on Amelia Island.
The cathedral structure as it stands today dates to the late 1700s (similar to Saint Louis Cathedral in NOLA), but there has been a cathedral there since the 1500s. The structures along St. George Street are as they stood in the 1700s and occasionally the 1600s, but many are "reconstructed" in the early part of the 1900s. Florida weather, hurricanes, and millions of tourists and winter vacationers/snowbirds have taken a toll on the city's oldest structures over the past 140 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LSyd
(Post 5597920)
|
The British St. Francis Barracks along the harbor were constructed beginning 1724. It's a building popular for weddings today and is in such good shape it doesn't even look 300 years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Barracks
Many people fail to realize that for a long time Florida meant St. Augustine, and then by the 1800s came to mean St. Augustine, Pensacola, and Key West, and by 1870 came Jacksonville and by 1890 came Tampa. Miami and certainly Orlando did not even exist until decades later, but over the course of the centuries until 1821 Florida was controlled by the Spanish, the British, technically the French for a year, and of course us (and we used FL as a bargaining tool with the other countries and "traded" the state with them multiple times).
St. Augustine Light was constructed in 1874, but was the 2nd lighthouse on the site. Still there are shipwrecks all along the northeast FL coast, and many now serve as reefs. Pirates really did terrorize the area, and proof is in the name of the street I lived on (as a matter of fact, and a real pirate of the 1800s who stole local cattle and seized land in Jacksonville, including the island I grew up on, which was a Brit's plantation).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine_Light
Flagler College, a small liberal arts college popular with northerners who wish to come down, now occupies the old Ponce de Leon Hotel built by Henry Flagler in 1888 and so nicely photographed by lSyd. Flagler's grandson spearheaded the effort to establish the college.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagler_College
Quote:
Originally Posted by LSyd
(Post 5597920)
|
Henry Flagler and his whole family are buried in St. Augustine in the Memorial Presbyterian Church built in 1889 and as depicted by lSyd below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoria...yterian_Church
Quote:
Originally Posted by LSyd
(Post 5597920)
|
Prev