A Walk Around the Block - Sisters of Saint Joseph Motherhouse

A wall of cochina stone runs the entire length of the south side of Cadiz between St. George and Avilez.  On the other side of the wall is the motherhouse of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of St. Augustine.  This society was first established in France in 1650 and came over to St. Augustine in 1866.  While their acknowledged mission is wisely, to change with the needs and times, their main focus seems to lean towards education.  Here is the vision quote from their web site, "Centered in contemplation, we work toward changing patterns of relationships which contribute to alienation, poverty and oppression".  That's beautiful!

The cornerstone of the motherhouse was laid on January 15, 1874.  The address is on Avilez, but the entrance from St. George looks more like the main entrance.

West entrance to Sisters of Saint Joseph motherhouse

The grounds between us and the motherhouse contains an inlaid stone cross with circles at each of the cardinal points, a circle at the intersection and a circle surrounding the whole thing.  A live oak tree is growing from the center.  Here is my feeble interpretation of this.  If anyone else has other info please, please chime in!

• The basic cross symbol is a vertical line representing the spiritual and a horizontal line representing the temporal.  (the motherhouse is at the south end of this, representing heaven?  If so are we in hell at the north end? Just kidding)
• A cross and circle combination is usually labeled as a Celtic cross.
• Circles radiating from the center usually refer to a Eucharistic symbol with the radiating circles representing manna.
• The four points of the cross can sometimes represent the four basic elements - earth, wind, fire and water.  There is a sundial in the eastern circle (sun/fire?) and a bird bath in the southern circle (water?).

Grounds to the north of the motherhouse

Sundial at Eastern point of cross

Inside view of the cochina stone wall which parallels Cadiz

View of grounds and north side of motherhouse

The cochina stone wall on Cadiz has a single break for a gate.

Gate at Cadiz street entrance

Cochina stone wall on Cadiz

Cochina stone wall detail

A Walk Around the Block - Stanbury Cottage

Continuing south on St. George past Palm Row we come to the Stanbury Cottage which, as you can see from the photo, is clearly haunted.

Gothic Revival house at Cadiz and St. George

I have not been able to find much out about this house.  The style is Gothic Revival and could be classified as Carpenter Gothic due to the use of wood to mimic the Gothic stone carvings, but with additional features which could only be done with wood.  It seems to still be individually owned.  It is included in the Historic American Buildings Survey and I understand that this was commissioned to document structures built prior to 1860.  I can't find the original construction date or who built it.  Here's a photo taken in 1936.  You can see that the ghosts have been doing a decent job of keeping the place up over the years.

Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress - HABS collection

A view of the south side of the cottage shows how much it sprawls to the west.  I thought that I had run across an article that indicated this was used as a hotel or boarding house at one time, but I can't find it.  I'll have to keep digging.

Note the ghost peeking through the shutters on the 2nd floor.

There is a whole lot more of interest down St. George, but this is a tour of the block and we are now at the Corner of St. George and Cadiz.  Here's a final glimpse south on St. George past the Stanbury Cottage before we turn left onto Cadiz.

Easter Day Parade

Or should I say East Aaargh Day Parade.  You can't do anything in this town without pirate infringement.  A look at this parade is a look into prehistoric Mardi Gras.  You can see how it will probably evolve over the next several hundred years.  For now though it mostly has a wholesome, hometown feel.  So grab some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show.

This first clip ends with a shot of Sophie and her mom Kayla.  We were watching Sophie for Kayla until her dad could take over.  We are on the north side of the Plaza de la Constitucion across from the Cathedral Basilica and the Wells Fargo bank.  You can see that the parade turns off of Avenida Menendez at the Bridge of Lions and comes past us down Cathedral Plaza.

They weren't trying to get fancy on this one, its just that a dog had run out in front of the horse.

This one includes some Easter hokey-pokey and some Easter skating

Somebody went to a lot of trouble on this pink fire truck, but for a good cause.

Easter Storm Troopers and Darth Vader? Easter wenches??  Easter pirates???

This one may give you that small town, family outing feel.  Its pretty cute.

Sorry, but I just don't get the Easter armadillo at all.

And finally of course, you can't go a weekend in St. Augustine without...

PIRATES!!!!!

HAPPY EAST AAAARGH!!!!!

A Walk Around the Block - Palm Row

South on St. George Street from the Paredes-Segui-Macmillan house is Palm Row.  This palm tree lined brick lane was developed between 1904 and 1910 by Henry Philip Ammidown.  Ammidown lived in the house at 1 Palm Row for a short time.  In the past 100 years it has housed two schools and a drug store.  It is back to being a residential dwelling now and is up for sale.  This beautiful Victorian Era house has actually been on the market since 2010 with the asking price dropping from $675,000 to the current $448,500.  All of the original six Victorian houses still stand on this cute street.  Interestingly, Henry Philip Ammidown also lived in the Paredes-Sequi-Macmillan house (previous post) which his father, Holmes Ammidown, purchased in 1873.

Palm Row Today

Here's a 1920's postcard showing what Palm Row looked like originally.  Not much has changed!

Courtesy of State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/161529
Original postcard photo by W.J. Harris

Here's the house at 1 Palm Row today with its shutters and carved bargeboards.

1 Palm Row - North side

1 Palm Row - Northeast side

Here are some of the details of 1 Palm Row.

Jigsawn Brackets

Victorian Era Shutters

Carved Bargeboard

The other houses have corbeled chimneys like this, but curiously the original one does not.

Corbeled Chimney

A Walk Around the Block - Paredes-Segui-Macmillan House

My plan for the next few posts is to take you for a walk around the block and introduce you to some of our neighbors.  I'm sure there will be other goings on about town that I will want to post as well so no telling how long this walk around the block may take.  For example, yesterday morning as Sable and I were taking a walk we saw a guy wearing a kilt.  Later in the morning, people were shooting at each other in the plaza and across town in Francis field was another festival, this time Celtic where they had questionable Celtic rides and Celtic food such as funnel cakes, corny dogs and turkey legs.  I didn't go.

Here's a map of our block with a marker where we live.


View Larger Map

We'll walk counterclockwise and so we start walking west down Artillery Lane.  There are some problems with this map and since its opens ourced I suppose I should figure out how to fix them, but I'll save that for another day.  We live where it shows the Oldest Store Museum.  I included a photo of the museum from the state archives in a previous post but here it is again.

Oldest Store Museum photo courtesy of State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/93627

As we walk down Artillery Lane and turn to look back, this is what the converted store now looks like.

View of "Oldest Store" after conversion to lofts.

The garage next to the store is now a thrift shop run by Trinity Episcopal Church.  Trinity is across the street from us.

Thrift shop on Artillery Lane which is operated by Trinity Episcopal

Looking west at the end of Artillery Lane, we have a view of the side of the former Hotel Alcazar which is now the Lightner Museum.

East side of Lightner Museum (former Hotel Alcazar) viewed from end of Artillery Lane.

St. Augustine had 3 magnificent hotels which were established in the latter part of the 19th century, the Alcazar (now the Lightner Museum and city government offices), the Ponce de Leon (now part of Flagler College), and the Casa Monica.  The Casa Monica is now once again a hotel and part of the Kessler Collection of antique hotels.  More to come about these jewels of the city.

As we round the corner onto St. George St. we come to the first house in our neighborhood which, by the way, is presently for sale so you, gentle blog reader, could be our neighbor.

Paredes-Segui-Macmillan house. Circa 1700's home.

See how the downstairs is stone and the upstairs wood?  This was originally built in 1764 as a single story home and supposedly has walls that are two feet thick.  Many of the colonial Spanish structures are made of coquina stone which was mined across from us on Anastasia Island.  I have a suspicion that this is true of this house, but need to dig deeper to be sure.  At one point in time they began pouring cement in a way that made it look like coquina stone but I think that was much later than this house was built.  Here's a look at the wall on the south side of the house to give you an idea of what coquina looks like - random sized blocks cemented together.

Southern gate of Paredes-Segui-Macmillan house.

The top floor was added in 1823.  As with most of the old homes here this structure has gone by many names including the Moeller house and the Juan Aguillar-Segui house.  The name I used in the caption is what is on the plate next to the front door.  Word is that this place had a major restoration in the 1960's and whoever owns it is doing a great job of keeping it up.  From the outside it is beautiful and even the rear carriage house is in good shape.

Carriage house behind Paredes-Segui-Macmillan house - East side.

Carriage house behind Paredes-Segui-Macmillan house - North side.

 This home is currently listed at $895,000 which actually seems like a steal.

Pirates and Spaniards and tourists, oh my!

I'm starting to see that there might be a downside to living right in the big middle of everything here.  For a bit of background you should know that parking in the historic part of town is horrible, as expected.  There was no allowance for cars back in the 1500's and 1600's when this stuff was built.  The quaint, narrow, cobbled streets are a challenge for me in my diesel pickup.  Since parking is at a premium, you can imagine that our walled in, gate accessed parking is quite a perk.  Problem is we have only one space and we have a princess in the family.  I typically park on the other side of the district in the parking garage because, well, its just easier that way.  This morning after running a few errands I was ready to park it for the day, but the traffic on Highway 1 was terrible.  This did not bode well.  Turns out there is a seafood festival this weekend and it is in the field across the street from the parking garage which, sadly, was full.  As I crept by in traffic, the festival looked a lot like the taste of Chicago festival - funnel cakes, corny dogs, turkey legs and lots of questionable rides operated by what appear to be homeless people.  I suppose there may have been some seafood for sale somewhere in the mix, but I opted not to partake.

Since the princess of the family is in Jacksonville for the day on business, I decided to park at home - temporarily of course.  I walked across to Mojo's for some bbq lunch and on the way back I ran into this in the plaza.

As you can see they are completely blocking my passage back home down St. George.  They are in front of the old Spanish government house.  The video is looking south down St. George, two blocks away from Artillery Lane.  I passed a lady who was dressed in period costume who told me that this would be a re-enactment of a 1668 retaliatory raid by the pirate, Robert Searle.  I moved on down to Aviles and as I approached the corner of Artillery Lane I heard drums and then a very loud boom.  I came to the corner to see the lane engulfed in smoke and pirates right outside my home!

I continued down Aviles and looped the block to come down Artillery Lane from the other direction.  The pirates had moved on down to Aviles.  I ran upstairs and got the muttsky who was very scared from all the loud noises.  We ran out and back up Aviles to the plaza and got to see some strange goings on.

This went on for a while until the Spanish retreated to the north up St. George toward the city gates.  Sable told me that she had enough of the loud noises so she and I retreated back home.

So now you too can get a feeling of what its like to battle your way through the tourists just to get to the other side of the historic district.  I'm thinking I need to shop around for a nice sword since the muttsky is not fond of the guns.

Music

As I walk through the old part of town on any weekend and most week nights I hear live music coming from many of the restaurants.  This is another addition to the ambiance of the town.  I have been lucky to have met 3 outstanding artists, James and Sylvia Kalal and Amy Hendrickson early on.  The first time I saw Amy perform was at Rhett's, a brasserie with a piano bar.  Amy was singing old style jazz like Nat King Cole and accompanied by Carl on the piano.  I'm embarrassed to say that all I know about Carl is his first name and that he's perfect with Amy.  I don't know anything about music except what I like so I shouldn't even try to describe this.  However, I have to say that I love the pairing of Amy and Carl and the style of music that she does in Rhett's is so well suited to her voice and demeanor.  Last night we had dinner at Rhett's with two great friends from Atlanta, +Stephanie Dodds  and her daughter, Jo Jo.  Take a look at these videos to get an idea of Amy's style and what a wonder she is to watch.

Jo Jo's first performance at Rhett's

As magical as Amy is though, there are other enticements for a five and a half year old girl.  This next video is pretty cute.

Jo Jo's big decision

James Kalal describes their music as Spanish with an African flair.  I take this to mean North African because it sounds to me like some Moroccan and Egyption rhythms are mixed in.  I can picture Natacha Atlas singing to their music.  They happened to be performing around the corner from us last weekend so we popped in and got this to give you an idea of their sound.

As we left Rhett's last night we received one final performance with some street musicians on Hypolita.

This is the sort of thing that St. Augustine does to you!

Our Distinguished Neighbors

The apartment overlooks the lush garden of the Segui-Kirby Smith house, home to the library of the St. Augustine Historical Society.  The garden holds a sculpture of two of the most famous men who lived in the house, Dr. A. H. Darnes and Edmund Kirby Smith.  Dr. Darnes was born a slave in the house and lived a remarkable life ending up a highly respected doctor in Jacksonville and as a prominent mason was the Florida Deputy Grand Master and High Priest of the Royal Arch chapter of Washington, D.C.  Kirby Smith was a general in the Confederate army and a professor of mathematics at the University of the South at Sewanee.

One evening we were walking hand-in-hand and as we rounded the corner of Aviles Street and Artillery Lane, I felt Cristan give a start.  She admitted that she was scared by the two guys standing quietly in the garden even though she knew they were statues and that this was not the first time they had startled her.  I didn't admit at the time that they had the same effect on me the first time I came across them in the dark.

The sculptor, Mariah J. Kirby-Smith is the great granddaughter of Edmund Kirby Smith.  A list of her works shows several in Columbia and I intend to find them while I'm still up here.  Edmund Kirby Smith was so respected that the state of Florida chose a statue of him as one of the two allowed representative statues in the Capitol building in Washington and there are many other monuments and memorials to him across the south.  Dr. Darnes was the only servant in either of the Civil War armies to have kept a journal and I can't wait for a chance to read through it.  The sculpture of these two men will certainly be a part of the walking tour and I hope to have enough information about both men to give the listener an idea of what sort of men they were as well as enough information to help him or her recognize the meaning behind the medical bag, Masonic watch fob and professorial robe.  This is exactly the point of the project - to add more depth and meaning in the surroundings of the curious traveler.

Why St. Augustine?

In May of 2012, +Cristan Carmon and I were on vacation for a couple of weeks in Fort Lauderdale, FL.  We had driven down from Columbia, SC, stopping in Daytona for one night on the way just to break up the long drive.  The stopover worked out so well that I determined to do the same on the way back to Columbia.  A couple of years ago my sister, +Suzanne Smith , was in the area for her son's, +Sean Smith , graduation from Embry-Riddle University and she had visited St. Augustine while she was in the state.  She raved about it and told me that the city should be a 'must see' on my list.  Su has great taste in these matters so I chose St. Augustine as the stopover point on the return home from Lauderdale.

I chose The Inn on Charlotte for our stay since it appeared to be well positioned in the middle of the historic part of town.  It is a quaint bed and breakfast that is converted from a home built in the early 1900's and Charlotte is a cobblestone street only one block west of the harbor.  Cristan had been asleep as we pulled into town, but woke up as soon as I turned onto the cobblestones.  She popped her head up, took one look around, and the first thing she said was, "Wow!  We're going to have to stay more than one day".  I agreed.  The historic part of town has that effect.  Little did I know what 'more than one day' would equate to.  I had booked one night in the converted carriage house behind the inn, but it was already reserved for the next night.  We extended one night and moved into the big house the next day.

St. Augustine is the oldest town in the US.  You can't throw a rock there without hitting a building that's older than the whole rest of the country.  The narrow streets in the old city are set up perfectly for walking and that's what people do.  This contributes to the overall feeling of pace of the town.  It seems to breathe and beat at a walker's pace rather than the jet-set feel of most of our other cities.  The combination of history and pace gives a feeling that, as they say in Louisiana, "is so good you t'ink you someplace else".

I had learned from my forays into Charleston, SC that a great way to learn a town is by using a walking tour - a small pamphlet with a map of historic locations and a brief description of each.  We asked around and looked for one of these with no luck.  I have been searching ever since and after much effort have only found two attempts at a walking tour.  One is The Standard Guide from 1898 and the other is Dr. Bronson's History of St. Augustine and both only appear to be available on-line.  The Standard Guide is well suited to a walking tour if printed out, but a bit out of date.  Dr. Bronson's guide is more up to date and may have been available in print form at one time, but is not easy to print now.  This got me thinking that an electronic walking tour would be a perfect fit for any GPS enabled smart phone or tablet.  It would be easier to use than a pamphlet since you could listen to the commentary as you stroll around and the GPS locator would keep track of your position and point out interesting things that are around you.

Cristan and I left St. Augustine with plans to return in 2 weeks.  That led to other stays and the more we experienced the town, the deeper we fell in love with it.  Cristan even had an extended stay of 2-1/2 months in a sub-leased apartment.  We finally decided to just go ahead and get a place in town and move to St. Augustine.  So now we will be living on the oldest platted street in the oldest city in the country and what better place to pursue the vision of an electronic walking tour while we learn about our new surroundings?  I have since established a little dot com, NAVIDET, for this project with plans to make it scale-able to additional cities.

So that's the reason why St. Augustine is the pilot location for our project.

Base of Operations

We have stayed at The Inn on Charlotte many times since our initial discovery of St. Augustine and have got to know Rodney and Jerry as good friends.  Cristan also sub-leased an apartment on Anastasia Island for a couple of months which helped us get a feel for the town in general and to better understand where we would like to ultimately establish our roots.  We determined that the optimum location would be right downtown within an easy walk of all the best points of interest and in an apartment so that I did not have to worry with maintenance while home from my travels.  Unfortunately, due to proximity to the college with the associated competition from students along with the limited number of available apartments, we had low hopes of finding something to fit these criteria.

We have been frequenting Nonna's Tratoria, a delicious Italian cafe on Aviles Street, where we have become good friends with the proprietor, Adamo.  We introduced my brother, +daniel raz , and his fiance, Rhonda Head to this place when they came to town in August and they fell in love with it and the location - enough so that they decided to get married there on New Year's Day.  Cristan and I returned to St. Augustine the day after Christmas for the wedding and had dinner at Nonnah's that night.  After dinner and some time for business to calm down, Adamo was able to join us at table where he surprised us with 3 excellent recommendations for apartments that perfectly fit our criteria.  We checked them out the next day and settled on a unit on Artillery Lane between Aviles and St. George streets.

Artillery Lane, Aviles Street and Charlotte Street are the oldest platted streets in the country.  The apartment is converted from a building which was completed in 1910 for C.F. Hamblen and used as his general store.  The building also later housed the Oldest Store Museum beginning in 2003.  We are in a corner apartment overlooking the garden of the Segui-Kirby Smith house, built in the 1700's.  As an added bonus the Sequi-Kirby Smith house is now the library of the St. Augustine Historical Society!  What a find!!

Oldest Store Museum photo courtesy of State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/93627

Cristan will start moving in within the next week and is so excited that she and the dog, Sable, are already packed.