Lost

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L ANDMARKS OF ST. AUGUSTINE


1565

Mission Nombre de Dios

1672

Castillo de San Marco

1704

1513

Juan Ponce de Leon

City Gates

1565

Pedro Menendez de Aviles

1570

Aviles Street


1888

1742

Ponce de Leon Hotel

Fort Matanzas

1880

Henry Flagler

1927

Bridge of Lions

1887

Alcazar Hotel

1874

The Lighthouse

1889

Memorial Presbyterian Church


1513

In April, the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed

on the Florida coast while searching for the Fountain

of Youth. Because he arrived during

the

Easter

season,

known as the Pascua Florida, Ponce named his new discovery La Florida, and claimed the

land for Spain. He also made a discovery that would lead to

the creation of St. Augustine. Sailing

along

coastline,

the

Ponce

de

Florida

Leon

realized that a strong current

was carrying his ships rapidly northward. This would aid in quickly returning Spanish ships home and was later called the Gulf Stream.




1565

On July 28, Menendez set

sail from Spain to conquer Florida. Led by his flagship the

San Pelayo, the leading ships reached Puerto Rico on August 8. He left Puerto Rico on August

15 with five ships, reached

Cape Canaveral on August 25, turned north and spent the next few days looking in vain for the French. Indians directed

him north, to what the French

called the River of Dolphins. On

the feast day of St. Augustine, August 28, he sailed through

the inlet and named the area after the saint.



1565

The mission traces its origins

to September 8, when Pedro MenĂŠndez de AvilĂŠs landed with a band of settlers to found

St. Augustine. Father Francisco

Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, who was the chaplain of the expedition,

celebrated

the

first Thanksgiving Mass on the

grounds. A formal Franciscan mission was founded near the city in 1587, perhaps the

first mission in the continental United States. The mission

served nearby villages of the

Mocama, a Timucua group, and was at the center of an important chiefdom in the late 16th and 17th century.


Aviles Street has the distinction

of being the oldest public street in the country. The thoroughfare

appears

on

archival maps dating from as

far back as the early 1570s. Spanish

settlers

originally

named the road Hospital Street because there was a colonial

military hospital located along the thoroughfare. The name

was later changed to honor the

Spanish hometown of the city’s founder. A wooden gateway

arch at the corner of King Street supported by granite

pillars marks the entrance to the historic street.



1672

The governor at the time

collected funds and found an

experienced military engineer, Ignacio Daza, to design a new

fort. A readily available building material was discovered on

nearby Anastasia Island. Called coquina, it is rock composed of tiny seashells concreted

together beneath the sea. An elaborate system of ferry boats

was required to transport the coquina, and an earthwork

surrounding the fort was built

from soil removed for a moat. Pirates,

huge

storms,

and

deaths of both the governor and

the

designer

caused

progress to lag. This huge

construction project resulted in a sharp increase in the

population of St. Augustine as

skilled craftsmen, engineers, laborers and slaves became

residents. By August 1695, the massive Castillo was at last complete and it was christened

as the “Castillo de San Marcos�




The Spanish began construction of the Cubo line, a powerful earthen wall backed by palmetto

logs. From the outworks of the

Castillo de San Marcos, the wall extended west across the

northern end of town to the San Sebastian River.

Along this line were the main gates to the city and several larger

fortifications

called

redoubts. The redoubts added

extra power to the line and

provided locations for artillery emplacements.

That the walls were effective is evident from the fact that

St. Augustine was never again conquered after they were built.


Fort Matanzas was built by the Spanish to guard Matanzas Inlet, which could

be used as a rear entrance

to the city of St. Augustine. Such an approach avoided St.

Augustine’s

primary

defense system, centered

at Castillo de San Marcos. Construction of the fort

began in 1740 and was completed in 1742.

With the Spanish Empire

falling apart, Spain spent little

effort

maintaining

the fort after the Treaty of Paris, 1783. When the

United States took control of Florida in 1821, the fort

had deteriorated to the point where soldiers could

not live inside. The United

States never used the fort and it became a ruin.



St. Augustine was the site of

the first lighthouse established

in Florida by the new American Government in 1824. This

lighthouse was placed on the

site of an earlier watchtower

built by the Spanish as early as the late 16th century.

Facing erosion and a changing

coastline, the old watchtower crashed

into

the

sea

in

1880, but not before a new lighthouse was lit. Today, the tower ruins may still be seen at low tide.

By 1870, beach erosion was

threatening the first lighthouse. Construction on a new light

tower began in 1871, and was completed in 1874.




1880

Henry Flagler, a partner with

John D. Rockefeller in Standard

Oil, arrived in St. Augustine in the 1880s. He was the driving

force behind turning the city into a winter resort for the wealthy

northern

elite.[88]

Flagler bought a number of

local railroads and incorporated

them into the Florida East Coast

Railway; it built its headquarters in St. Augustine.

Flagler commissioned the New York architectural firm of Carrère

and Hastings to design a number

of extravagant buildings in St. Augustine, among them the Ponce de Leon Hotel and the Alcazar Hotel.



1887 The

Alcazar

Hotel

commissioned

by

was

Henry

Flagler to appeal to wealthy

tourists who traveled south for the winter on his railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway.

The hotel was designed by New

York

City

architects

Carrère and Hastings, in the Spanish Renaissance Revival style.

The hotel had a steam room, massage parlor, sulfur baths, gymnasium, ballroom, largest

a

and

indoor

three-storey

the

world’s

swimming

pool; however, after years as an elegant winter resort for wealthy patrons, the hotel closed in 1932.


1888

The hotel was the first of its kind constructed entirely of poured concrete,

using

the

local

coquina stone as aggregrate. The hotel also was wired for electricity at the onset, with the power being supplied

by D.C. generators supplied by Flagler’s friend, Thomas

Edison. When electricity was first put in Henry Flagler hired staff to turn power on and off

for his residents, because the

people staying at the hotel were too afraid to turn the switches on and off.




1889

The Memorial Presbyterian Church is a historic church built by Henry

Flagler and dedicated in honor of his daughter Jennie Louise Benedict,

who

died

following

complications from childbirth the same year. Designed

by

the

New

York

architectural firm of Carrère and

Hastings in the Second Renaissance Revival style and inspired by St

Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the church was built utilizing poured concrete

mixed with crushed coquina stone. Like the Alcazar and Ponce de Leon, many of the architectural details were created with terra cotta.

Upon Flagler’s death in 1913

he was interred in a marble mausoleum

within

the

church

beside his daughter Jennie Louise and her infant Marjorie, as well as

his first wife Mary Harkness Flagler.


1927

The “Father of the Bridge of

Lions” was Henry Rodenbaugh, the vice president and bridge expert

for

Henry

Flagler’s

Florida East Coast Railway.

In the early 1920s, he organized

the bond issue to finance a new

bridge to replace the one built in 1895, and it was completed in 1927.

It gets its name from two

Carrara marble Medici lions statues that are copies of those

found in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, Italy. The statues were

a gift of Dr. Andrew Anderson, who had them made by the

Romanelli Studios in Florence, Italy. The Medici lions are also

known for the copies placed in the Throne Room of the Royal Palace of Madrid.



&

NOT ON MAP


Juan Ponce de Leon Town Plaza

Castillo de San Marco 1 S Castillo Drive

Henry Flagler 74 King Street

Alcazar Hotel 75 King Street

Pedro Menendez de Aviles 75 King Street

City Gates Orange Street

Ponce de Leon Hotel 74 King Street

Mission Nombre de Dios 27 Ocean Ave

Aviles Street Off of King Street

Fort Matanzas 8635 A1A Street Memorial Presbyterian Church 32 Sevilla Street

The Lighthouse 100 Red Cox Drive

Bridge of Lions Off of Cathedral Place



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