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.