City commissioners Monday voted to ban gas stations along San Marco Avenue, while approving a limit of eight gas pumps at stations along the city's other two entrance corridors, King Street (including West King Street) and Anastasia Boulevard. 

The proposed ordinance, being reviewed by commissioners for public hearing at a later date, will return to the commission March 10 after legal advertising of the ordinance amendment and then be set for a March 24 hearing and final action.

The San Marco ban would not affect the current 7-Eleven project, which is expected to be appealed to the commission. It has 30 days to appeal a denial February 20 by the city's Historic Architectural Review Board. If filed before this week's end that appeal would go to the commission at its March 10 meeting to approve legal sufficiency, and the March 24 meeting for the appeal itself.

Urging the San Marco gas station ban, Commissioner Don Crichlow said, "We have to get these big tankers off San Marco."

A proposed ordinance to require removal of signs within fifteen days and sign structures within six months following a commercial vacancy was advanced by city commissioners Monday to public hearing and final action at its March 10 meeting.

The action came after discussion which included a suggestion by Commissioner Roxanne Horvath that vacated sign structures might take public art for city beautification.

City Attorney quickly reminded commissioners the city cannot "pick and choose the content" of such artwork. Planning and Building Director Mark Knight said continued use of sign structures can be granted as a use by exception "if an owner can demonstrate that they need the sign for some purpose."  

Train Depot, Waterworks, or both?

The brick building on San Marco Avenue was confirmed to be the first city waterworks building, listed last week on the National Register of Historic Places.

Bay at left suggests ticket window for train depot in current photo, which also shows deteriorating brickwork. Building has been fenced off as hazardous.

    But city Historic Planner Jenny Wolfe admits, "This building and site have been full of mystery and there is still an unresolved structural question."

Wolfe said "(Architectural Historian) Paul Weaver discovered the construction specifications contract at the St. Augustine Historical Society which specifically called out the materials and expenses related to the waterworks to include a pumping station, aerating well, chimney stack, intake well, in addition to all the piping and machinery for the pumping station."

But Architect Dave Mancino, whose research five years ago convinced him the building was originally a train depot, counters, "Paul Weaver did produce a contract asking for construction of this (waterworks) structure dated 1897 (but) the historical society has the minutes of the Jacksonville St Augustine Halifax River Railroad which shows the expense of the 1883 Depot on the waterworks site at $5,000.

"That cost seems consistent with the simple brick structure with the steeply sloped slate roof. I don't know what evidence the city has of a frame structure on the waterworks site. $5,000 seems like an extravagant cost for a frame structure at that time. (And) photos clearly show waiting room benches and a round settee outside of the waterworks."

Possibility: a train depot in 1883 preceded the waterworks in 1887.  

Conclusion: says Mancino, "Although we each have different beliefs about this structure I do hope the city is able to restore its use for useful civic functions."

Mancino's research for the city included an estimate of between $1.2-$1.8 million for restoration as a community hall. The city is in the running for a $50,000 state grant which, with a required $50,000 city match, could provide funds for building stabilization and further research.

Commentary

   Some (myself included) might say the city drove another nail into historic interpretation's coffin by rescinding authorization for eight changing of the guard reenactments on St. George Street this year.

   Others say the 1740 Spanish Garrison, a bulwark of historic interpretation ever since the Castillo settled on interpretation of 1740s Spanish military life, has never gotten its pins in order, such as forming a nonprofit 501.c.3 for funding support and studying the rules.

   After a poorly worded Report item two weeks ago that the Garrison "circumvented St. George sterility" (a three-parade limit per organization per year), city hall quickly notified the Garrison it must stand on its own rather than under the umbrella of the Historic Florida Militia, whose other units allowed their names to sponsor additional guard changes.

   That means their own insurance and the limit of three reenactments.

   The preamble to ordinances banning virtually all non-shopping activity along St. George Street could also be interpreted to support such actual historic reenactments as the changing of the guard. Portions of that preamble:

WHEREAS, it is of primary concern and interest to the City of St. Augustine, Florida to vigilantly protect and preserve the quality and historical and cultural ambience of the historical sections of the City. ... This (St. George Street) area of St. Augustine is a vital area of the City and serves the community and visitors to St. Augustine as the frontispiece of the story and life of this oldest city in the United States; and WHEREAS, in no area of America, much less the City, is it more important to protect and preserve the quality, ambience and environment than this ancient pedestrian area of City life...

1 year, 6 months, 14 days  to St. Augustine's 450th anniversary 

              

  

         

   Two researchers claim that Fort Caroline, the French outpost overrun by Pedro Menendez' forces shortly after the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, was not at today's Jacksonville but rather "70 miles north, on the Altamaha River, south of Darien, Ga." 

   If true, that could scuttle the idea of St. Augustine as the Spaniards' first permanent settlement, for it was from here that Menendez led his troops on foot, through a hurricane, some 35 miles to the fort. The researchers may be confusing this fort with a later one, according to a letter from Menendez to Spain's King Phillip II.

His account:

The Commandant and the Captains also wrote me that the two French ships which escaped when we took the fort of St. Matthew (Fort Caroline) in which Juan Rivao's (French Captain Ribault) eldest son escaped the day that he was in the fort by swimming to one of these ships, had gone five and twenty leagues (75 miles) beyond, towards the north to a very good harbor called Guale, the Indians there being their friends.

And that there are, within a space of three or four leagues, forty villages of the Indians of two brothers, one of whom is called Causin, and the other Guale, and these two brothers are great friends of the General Ludunier (Rene Laudonnière) who was in Florida before the coming of Juan Rivao.

The day that we took the fort, he jumped over the wall in his shirt, and fled to the mountain, wounded by a pike, and we never heard any further news of him, save that it was said that the Indians, his enemies, had killed him.

It seemed to me that Ludunier reached the shore before the son of Juan Rivao got over the bar, that he took him in and, as he knew of the harbor of Guale and the two caciques were his friends, that he went there with the two ships, and that, in great haste, he threw up a fort, and that he had in it seventy or eighty men; that he had sent one of the ships to France and kept the other there.

They must have much artillery and ammunition and stores, for these two ships had not yet discharged what they brought from France.

... with the largest force I can get together, which shall be, if possible, not less than three hundred men, for this is little enough, I shall go to Guale, where Ludunier and Juan Rivao's son are, and endeavor to take their fort and expel them from the land before they can be succored from France.

   Image: Flicker.com  

   

   Capture 449 years of St. Augustine history with St. Augustine Bedtime Stories - Dramatic accounts of famous people and events. Details here.