St. Augustine in Florida

Monday, 24 July 2017 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General
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City Hall and Lichtner Museum © JanGoldsmith/cc-by-sa-3.0

City Hall and Lichtner Museum © JanGoldsmith/cc-by-sa-3.0

St. Augustine (Spanish: San Agustín) is a city in the Southeastern United States, on the Atlantic coast in northeastern Florida. It is the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement within the borders of the continental United States. As the county seat of St. Johns County, it is part of Florida’s First Coast region and the Jacksonville metropolitan area, with a population of 15,000. Saint Augustine was founded on September 8, 1565, by Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Florida’s first governor. He named the settlement “San Agustín“, as his ships bearing settlers, troops, and supplies from Spain had first sighted land in Florida eleven days earlier on August 28, the feast day of St. Augustine.

The city served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years, and became the capital of British East Florida when the territory briefly changed hands between Spain and Britain. Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819, and when the treaty was ratified in 1821, St. Augustine was designated the capital of the Florida Territory until Tallahassee was made the capital in 1824. Since the late 19th century, St. Augustine’s distinct historical character has made the city a major tourist attraction, and it is also the headquarters for the Florida National Guard. Henry Flagler, a co-founder with John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company, spent the winter of 1883 in St. Augustine and found the city charming, but considered its hotels and transportation systems inadequate. He had the idea to make St. Augustine a winter resort for wealthy Americans from the north, and to bring them south he bought several short line railroads and combined these in 1885 to form the Florida East Coast Railway. He built a railroad bridge over the St. Johns River in 1888, opening up the Atlantic coast of Florida to development. Flagler began construction in 1887 of two large ornate hotels, the 540-room Ponce de León Hotel and the Hotel Alcazar, and bought the Casa Monica Hotel the next year. His chosen architectural firm, Carrère and Hastings, radically altered the appearance of St. Augustine and gave it a skyline, beginning an architectural trend in the state characterized by the use of elements of the Moorish Revival style. With the opening of the Ponce in 1888, St. Augustine became the winter resort of American high society for a few years.

City Hall and Lichtner Museum © JanGoldsmith/cc-by-sa-3.0 Catholic Heritage Plaque © Glemmen1/cc-by-sa-4.0 Flagler College © Ebyabe/cc-by-sa-3.0 Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church © Ebyabe/cc-by-sa-3.0 Old city gates © Ebyabe/cc-by-sa-3.0 Castillo de San Marcos © National Park Service St. Augustine - Flagler College © Excel23/cc-by-sa-3.0
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Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church © Ebyabe/cc-by-sa-3.0
After Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railroad had been extended southward to Palm Beach and then Miami, the rich mostly abandoned St. Augustine in the early 20th century and began to customarily spend their winters in South Florida, where the climate was warmer and freezes were rare. St. Augustine nevertheless still attracted tourists, and eventually became a destination for families traveling in automobiles as new roads were built and Americans took to the road for annual summer vacations. The tourist industry soon became the dominant sector of the local economy. With the help of state and federal government monies, St. Augustine began a program in 1935 to preserve thirty-six surviving colonial buildings and reconstruct others that were gone. In 1965, St. Augustine celebrated the quadricentennial of its founding, and jointly with the State of Florida, inaugurated a program to restore part of the colonial city. When the State of Florida abolished the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board in 1997, the City of St. Augustine assumed control of more than thirty-six buildings that had been reconstructed or restored to their historical appearance, as well as other historic properties including the Government House. In 2015, St. Augustine celebrated its 450th year of its founding with a visit from Felipe VI of Spain and Queen Letizia of Spain.

Points of interest are: Avero House, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, Fort Matanzas National Monument, Fort Mose Historic State Park, Nombre de Dios, Gonzalez-Alvarez House, Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, The Spanish Military Hospital Museum, St. Francis Barracks, Colonial Quarter, Ximenez-Fatio House, González-Jones House, Llambias House, Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse, The King’s Bakery, St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum, Markland Mansion, Ponce de León Hotel, Casa Monica Hotel, Hotel Alcazar, Zorayda Castle, Bridge of Lions, Old St. Johns County Jail, Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Museum located in 1887 mansion of William Worden, St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park, Lincolnville National Historic District, Anastasia State Park, Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, St. Augustine Amphitheatre, St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum, World Golf Hall of Fame, and parks in St. Augustine parks.

Read more on City of St. Augustine, VisitStAugustine.com, St. Augustine, nation’s oldest city, VisitFlorida.com – St. Augustine, Marineland Dolphin Adventure, The Guardian, 6 November 2020: Deluged by floods, America’s ‘oldest city’ struggles to save landmarks from climate crisis, Wikivoyage St. Augustine and Wikipedia St. Augustine (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.




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