Rodriguez-Avero-Sanchez House in St. Augustine

Here is the Rodriguez-Avero-Sanchez House at 52 St. George Street in St. Augustine. The first rooms of this house were built sometime around 1760 or 1761. In 1761 it was the home of a former member of the Spanish garrison, a Galician named Fernando Rodriguez. When he died in 1762, Antonia de Avero inherited the property. Over the years, the house passed from one owner to another - some British, some Spanish, some members of the Avero family, some not. Between 1791 and 1802, Juan Sanchez built the two-story coquina-block portion of the house that fronts onto St. George Street today.

The National Park Service's Historic American Building Survey documented the Rodriguez-Avero-Sanchez House in the 1960s, providing a detailed history of the house and a description of the building. The HABS documentation includes 1960 photographs of the house before its restoration as well as 1965 "after" images.

The 1965 images of the Rodriguez-Avero-Sanchez House were taken by Jack Boucher, whose career as a photographer for the Historic American Building Survey is featured in the Spring 2009 issue of Common Ground. Common Ground is a free publication of the National Park Service.

There's a What?

Today the Tribune reported that the police raided a grow house in Tampa. But that's not what caught my eye. It was that the grow house was hidden in an old Army Air Corps underground ammunition bunker, which is now evidently part of somebody's yard!

The house is in the Drew Park neighborhood, east of the airport and west of the stadium. During World War II, Drew Park was part of Drew Field, an Army Air Corps training base.

Every house has a story. Some are more eventful than others.

Vacation Photos

Really, nothing to do with Florida, but here are some pictures from a recent trip to Chicago.

Calder's Flamingo reflected in Mies van der Rohe's Loop Station post office
















Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House














The Rookery Building















Sears Tower




















The house in LaGrange where David Hasselhoff lived when he was in high school

Florida in Life

Google recently added a way to search old Life magazine photographs: Life photo archives.

Some examples of Florida photographs found this way. . . .

Soldiers at mailcall outside the Breakwater Hotel, Miami Beach, 1942

Dwight D. Eisenhower's arrival in Key West in a lemon-colored Cadillac, December 1955

Upside-down house, 1960

Nixon and the balloon drop, GOP Convention, Miami Beach, 1968

Architect Eliot Noyes and interior decorator Kathryn Smallen on terrace of bubble house at Hobe Sound, Florida, 1954

Mr. Roser

One of the original developers of Anna Maria Island was Charles Roser. Roser is generally credited with being the inventor of Fig Newtons, although some of the details are lost in the murky depths of time. After selling the Fig Newton to National Biscuit Company (Nabisco), Roser moved down to Florida and tried his hand at real estate development. In addition to Anna Maria Island, he promoted Roser Park in St. Petersburg.

On Pine Street, near the Anna Maria City Pier, are two buildings with historical connections to the cookie maker: Roser Cottage and the Roser Community Memorial Church. The church was built by Charles' father John Roser, in memory of his wife.

It Was Nice, Even Though It Was Closed...

Well, what did I expect for the afternoon of the 4th of July! But I stopped by the Anna Maria Island Museum anyhow, and had a fine time. The museum itself is in one of those types of historic buildings I like, the ones that don't look like anything in particular, until you know the back-story. According to the historical marker, it was built in 1920 as an ice house, the "was subsequently used as city hall, the police department, a firehouse and the Turtle House" before being renovated in 1992 as the historical society's museum.

Here's the view from inside:

Again, the historical marker was helpful here, reporting that the jail was built in 1927 to handle overly happy guests of a local tavern. At the time, the jail did have bars, but no window glass, and it seems the mosquitoes had a "sobering effect." A fire in 1940 burned the wooden parts of the jail building, leaving the concrete/tabby parts to become a local tourist attraction.

Another historic building at the museum is the Belle Haven Cottage, built in 1920 in the bay next to the City Pier (click here for a historic postcard showing the cottage in its original location). Evidently the house's piers rotted and it fell into the water after just six years. Lyman Christy bought the cottage and had it barged around tot he other side of the island. He fixed it up and it was home for him and his wife Wanda for nearly 50 years. Then in 2001, the house was moved again, this time to the museum site. So say the historic markers. I like the flower bed border of mismatched plates.

For more information about the Anna Maria Island Historical Society and their museum, here's a link to their website. Do as I say, and not as I do, and go visit them when they're open!

Clearwater Marine Aquarium

Clearwater Marine Aquarium, just over the Memorial Causeway Bridge (shown in the photo below, completed in 2005) from the mainland, is not as glossy as SeaWorld or the Florida Aquarium. The facility was converted from a sewage treatment plant in the 1970s, and that along with the large amounts of salt water and sea life contained within its concrete walls give it somewhat of a utilitarian air. The point of visiting here is to learn about sea life, not to admire architecture, although that does come into the story later on). The Aquarium's mission is to rescue marine animals, rehabilitate them, and release them back into their natural environments. Some animals cannot be returned to the wild because of injuries sustained, and they stay at the aquarium, becoming educational ambassadors. On the Aquarium's most famous residents is Winter, a young bottlenose dolphin who became entangled in a rope at a young age. The rope cut off the bolld supply to her tail. Now without a tail, she cannot swim as well as other dolphins. She captured national media attention when she received a prosthetic tail.

On a recent visit to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, I did catch a glimpse of Winter, as well as several sea turtles, stingrays, sharks, and a sea otter. We also went on the aquarium's two-hour boat tour of Clearwater Bay, a nice trip for families, visitors, and all age groups. The trip is on a pontoon boat, with schedules stops to raise a crab trab and do some shelling on a spoil island. A couple of kids on the boat found sea urchins (reddish things in photo below), which they shared with the rest of the group. The tour guides/educators also run a seine net out, sampling underrwater life at different points in the bay. Creatures we all got to see included grunts, sea squirts, spider crabs, arrow crabs, tiny blue crabs, and bigger blue crabs. At one point a pod of six dolphins -- several of which were just youngsters -- lept beside the boat.

Along the way down the Intracoastal Waterway, the captain pointed out several houses on the shore, including Hulk Hogan's Swiss chalet-style mansion. Now, it's probably not a surprise to any of you, but I'm kind of a history geek, and I was a lot more interested in another house the captain mentioned.

This is Spottis Woode, sometimes called Spotswood, Donald Roebling's waterfront estate. The captain mentioned that Donald Roebling was the grandson of the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge, but Donald is noteworthy based on his own acheivements.

In 1930, Donald Roebling bought this parcel of land in Clearwater, naming it honor of his finacee, Miss Spottiswoode. Roebling built a fabulous Tudor-style mansion, then added a machine shop to the estate. After the 1928 Lake Okeechobee hurricane, Roebling saw first hand how difficult rescue efforts had been. In his machine shop, he built the first prototypes of the Roebling Alligator, an amphibious tractor or tank. He repeated tried to get the military interested in his invention, but unsuccessfully so until the Alligator was featured in a 1937 issue of Life magazine. By 1940, Roebling was suppling the vehicles to the Marine Corps. The Alligator played an important role in the Pacific Theater during World War II, after being testing on the beaches of Clearwater Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

For more information about Donald Roebling and the Roebling Alligator:

"Roebling's Amphibian The Origin Of The Assault Amphibian," by Richard W. Roan

"The Alligator Amphibian: A Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark" (from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a pdf file, includes photographs)

Florida News Stories

"Blast from the past: Who owns history?" (Tallahassee Democrat, March 9, 2008) Columnist Mark Hinson ponders his Southern heritage, free speech, and others mysteries of history at a reenactment of the Civil War Battle of Natural Bridge. "Unless you're Tooter Turtle and have access to a time machine, who really knows what anyone was thinking at Natural Bridge in March 1865? All I know for sure is that Civil War re-enactors love loud things that go bang and ka-boom."

"Agreement pending on state purchase of Natural Bridge battlefield" (Tallahassee Democrat, April 27, 2008)

"For sale: House of spies -- $22 million will buy a grand Coral Gables home used by the CIA -- and an island outpost" (Miami Herald, April 20, 2008) "The house at 6312 Riviera Dr. in Coral Gables is grand by almost any measure. It has a 33-foot long living room with dragons carved into its marble fireplace, vases that once belonged to Umberto I, King of Italy, a dance patio, mini-Olympic pool, an elevator, a tidewater pond, more than a dozen bathrooms, two roomy boathouses and a pedigreed architect. Batista once considered buying it and Billy Graham left behind a signed Bible."

"Stuart B. McIver, 86: Revered regional historian" (Miami Herald, April 25, 2008)

"An Epic of the Everglades" A glowing review of Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend, by Peter Matthiessen, in the New York Review of Books.

"Mullets get some air at the Flora-Bama" (Press-Register, April 27, 2008) "By 1 p.m. Saturday, about 300 fish had already been flung. To that point the farthest toss had been registered by Powder Springs, Ga., resident Adam McDaniel, who slung a mullet 183 feet and 9 inches." (I found a link to this report on the Interstate Mullet Toss on the Dave Barry Blog.)

Renewing West Tampa

This weekend was the First Annual Renew Tampa event, highlighting connections between historic preservation and environmental conservation. Part of Renew Tampa was a two-day schedule of speakers and an expo hall of architects and builders, which was held at the historic Berriman-Morgan cigar factory in Tampa (click here for Tampa Tribune's special report on the Berriman Morgan factory, including an interesting interactive graphic of the building and its history). The factory is currently being renovated by Jammal Engineering.

In past decades, after cigars were no longer made within its walls, the Berriman-Morgan factory stood empty. Interstate 275 cut the factory off from the rest of West Tampa, and today the interstate is being widened, bringing the highway right up to the factory lot.

Cigar factories are not heavy industrial sites, and so neighborhoods grew up around them, with houses immediately across the street. It was Old Urbanism, with home, work, school, and stores all within walking distance. Or if not, you could hop on a streetcar to get there. Looking out the windows of the Berriman-Morgan factory, a few remnants of this pattern of development can be seen.

After the event, I drove home, cutting through West Tampa on Howard Avenue. As I passed by Baker & Co., I stopped and turned around and went back. It's an antique / nostalgic general store in a restored historic brick building. They have a tea room for group events, and you can buy rose-scented soap, nickel candy, or bleacher seats from Wrigley Field.

Behind the store is this funny little house, one of a string of similar funny little houses on the block. This is a common pattern in West Tampa, where the entire neighborhood wasn't built at one time by one developer like suburbs are today, but where a small developer or single landowner owned a few city lots and built a few houses using the same design. These then generated rental income, an investment.

Going back to the store's parking lot, this is what you see:

This is the Centro Espanol de West Tampa, built as a branch of the El Centro Espanol in Ybor City, a social club and mutual aid society for Spanish immigrants in Tampa. In recent years, the fate of the Centro Espanol de West Tampa building has been up in the air, but today it is the temporary home of the Tampa Museum of Art. The museum itself has been in the news a good bit, but the short end of it is that the collections are being housed here while a new museum building is being built downtown.

I stopped in, but I hadn't realized the museum closed at 4 on a Saturday. I apologized to the woman at the desk for coming in 10 minutes before closing. That's fine she said, it'll only take you five minutes to go through the gallery anyhow. Oh-kay....

So I went ahead to the gallery, which is around a post and through what looks like a tiled cafeteria. There's lots of white. And the exhibit was mostly pen and ink or charcoal, just occasional color. But it was pretty good, what there was.

Websites showing renovation of Centro Espanol de West Tampa:

windows

molding and exterior trimwork

Old House Lagniappe

For you old house fans, here's a Dutch Colonial Revival cross-gambrel house in downtown Clermont, Florida. That's Lake Minneola in the background. I just happened to be passing by there this weekend, and somethng caught my eye, perhaps the pink!

A Warm Spring Evening

Here's one of the good things about living in Florida -- friends and family come and visit you here. When they do, it's a wonderful excuse to take off after work and have barbeque on the front porch of an old camelback bungalow. And perhaps an after-dinner stroll down the bay shore.

Kojak's on Gandy Boulevard

Downtown Tampa at dusk

All in all, a good way to celebrate the first day of Spring.