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.