Historic St. Augustine’s Rich Tapestry of Life : FLORIDA

A languid ocean breeze stirred the Spanish moss on the oak trees that spread out above our table, dappling the sunlight that fell on our steaming food.

The alligator tail, my wife’s idea, was even tastier than the spicy Minorcan chowder, linguine with clam sauce and shrimp boiled in beer and red peppers.

We were having lunch at Cap’s Seafood, a rough-hewn eatery on the Intracoastal Waterway a few minutes from downtown St. Augustine. I had hoped that the alligator, a first for me, would give me strength and courage, or at least a tough hide. I was a little nervous about having agreed to speak to three journalism classes at Flagler College, a liberal arts school and the intellectual hub of America’s oldest city.

St. Augustine is an intriguing mix of the old and the new, a pre-colonial town of racial diversity that has flown the flags of Spain, England, the Confederacy and the United States since it was founded in 1565.

It is a town where you can hear fine jazz at a club, Richard’s Jazz Club (77 San Marco Ave., 904-829-9910), owned by black entrepreneur Richard White, a St. Augustine city commissioner who once fought City Hall but is now one of the powers that be.

It is also the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested June 12, 1964, and taken to testify before a grand jury. King wanted it known that America’s oldest city was also America’s oldest segregated city. At the time, St. Augustine was the scene of racial demonstrations to challenge segregation in restaurants and motels and to rally support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It is a tourist area with sand dollars on the white beaches, brown pelicans wheeling overhead, dolphins cavorting offshore and herons picking through the marshes.

It is golf country. And tennis country.

The alligator must have helped; the classes were fine and the students asked good questions. But the eye-opener for me and other travelers who stopped at Flagler College was the school’s magnificent Spanish Renaissance architecture, which is faithful to the history of the former garrison town that was created to defend Spain’s interests in the New World.

The college campus now encompasses the former Ponce de Leon Hotel, completed in 1888 for Standard Oil co-founder and railroad builder Henry M. Flagler. For a time, the Northern Florida hotel may have been the most exclusive in the country. Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant and Frederick Vanderbilt were guests at the opening.

Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding and Lyndon B. Johnson all stayed at the Ponce de Leon. Harding fished, golfed and went boating in the St. Augustine area, as many do today.

The design of the building alone makes it worth a visit. It has been painstakingly restored and is now used by the college to house students and hold classes. The Ponce de Leon’s decorator was Louis Tiffany, of Tiffany glass fame. The great rotunda and dining hall were decorated with mural paintings by George W. Maynard, while the ceiling of the grand parlor is covered with angelic canvasses by Virgilio Tojetti, painted in Paris and then stretched between the ceiling moldings of the hotel.

Since its conversion to a college building in 1968, the former hotel has undergone more than $10 million worth of restoration work.

We found much to see in St. Augustine and surrounding St. Johns County--a land of grand gnarled trees and dangling moss, rivers and the meandering waterway, white-sand beaches and saltwater marshes. There are splendid old homes and buildings that have been restored, plus forts, museums and antiquities.

The area is also rich in recreation. There is golf and tennis, and saltwater and freshwater fishing. Beach and ocean activities include boating, surfing, skiing, jetskiing and scuba diving. Professional golf’s PGA Tour national headquarters and the Tournament of Players Club are at Ponte Vedra Beach north of St. Augustine, an area of stately homes and manicured lawns. There are public golf, tennis and racquetball facilities.

St. Augustine has its own pier, yacht harbor, yacht club and boat yards. Boaters and fishermen can rent boats or launch their own. And there are charter boats and party boats for fishermen.

The historic city is also a stopover for boaters traveling on the Intracoastal Waterway between New York and Miami.

It isn’t far from Flagler College in a charming horse-drawn carriage to another of the city’s most impressive sights--Castillo de San Marcos, a national monument that is open daily for tours. The fort is the oldest masonry fortification in the United States, and the only original fort still standing in the United States that was built in the 17th Century (1672-1695).

The fort was built by Indians (Guale, Timucuan and Apalechee), blacks (crown slaves from Havana, local slaves and free blacks), white artisans (stone cutters, blacksmiths, quarrymen, lime burners and boatmen) and convict laborers (both Spanish and English).

The walls, 33 feet above the fort’s moat and 14 to 19 feet thick at the base, helped keep out pirates.

The fort was never captured. The entire population of St. Augustine hid in it for more than 30 days in 1740 while British warships blockaded the harbor and artillerymen bombarded the city with enough ammunition to shatter an ordinary brick or stone fort. But the coquina stone walls of San Marcos didn’t crumble. Coquina is an aggregate of small marine shells cemented together by a natural mortar. Besides Castillo de San Marcos, it was used to build many other structures in the St. Augustine area.

The fort also withstood a siege led by Gov. James Moore of Carolina, from Nov. 8 to Dec. 20, 1702.

The fort was an outgrowth of Spain’s ambitions in the New World after Don Juan Ponce de Leon discovered the northeastern coast of Florida on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1513. He was impressed by the beauty of the land and called it La Florida , the flower.

But the Spanish worried about the French, who had built a fort at the mouth of the St. Johns River that posed a threat to Spanish treasure fleets, which sailed along the Florida coast.

Phillip II of Spain sent a trusted admiral, Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, to be governor, colonize the territory and drive out the pirates and settlers of other nations. Menendez came ashore with 600 soldiers and settlers on Sept. 8, 1565, and, with the help of a hurricane that blew the French fleet out of position, destroyed the French garrisons.

In 1763, Great Britain took over the garrison town of St. Augustine the easy way, by treaty, and ruled for a 20-year period that included the American Revolution. Spain took St. Augustine and east Florida back by treaty in 1783 and ruled for another 37 years.

Then 255 years after Menendez came ashore, Spain sold Florida to the United States, which took possession in 1821.

North of the fort, in a beautiful wooded area with a fountain, is the Mission Nombre de Dios, established where Menendez landed. It was the first in a chain of Catholic missions that eventually lined the east and west coasts. Not far from the tiny mission, which is still used, is a 208-foot-high stainless-steel cross that was erected in 1965 to celebrate the city’s 400th birthday.

Near the mission is the Fountain of Youth Park, which is filled with mature trees and rusting cannons, chains and an anchor. The park’s Discovery Globe, inside a small auditorium, truncates Spanish history in the New World into an eight-minute oral and visual presentation. The Celestial Planetarium shows the constellations that were in the skies when Ponce de Leon discovered North America and claimed it for Spain.

Both the mission and park are on the route of open-air tourist trolleys that roll by every 15 or 20 minutes on a seven-mile route. A guide points out the attractions, and passengers can leave the tour to spend time at an attraction, then get back on the trolley with the same ticket.

Visitors will find the Oldest Schoolhouse near the old city gates worth their time. The structure, built before the American Revolution, is constructed of red cedar and cypress joined by wooden pegs. Mannequins in period dress represent the schoolmaster and pupils.

Another worthwhile sight is the city’s Oldest House and Museum Complex, operated by the St. Augustine Historical Society. It’s a good place to explore 400 years of history. Nearby are the country’s oldest and the old jail, with its collection of guns and other weapons used in the commission of crimes.

Among the restored homes and gardens in the Spanish quarter of St. George Street, one can get a feeling for the lives of the Spanish soldiers and settlers in the 1740s.

Another of Henry Flagler’s contributions, the Alcazar Hotel, is now the Lightner Museum, which has an unusual collection of Victorian antiquities: brilliant Victorian cut glass, a stained-glass room featuring the work of Louis Tiffany, furnishings, costumes and mechanical musical instruments.

The former casino and indoor swimming pool of the Alcazar is now the Lightner Antique Mall, containing shops selling antique furnishings, glassware, china, coins and books.

With more than 200 restaurants in St. Augustine and St. Johns County, a visitor can choose from French, German, Cuban, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Greek, Mexican, Southern or upscale American fare.

One of St. Augustine’s best restaurants is the Raintree, located in a picturesque century-old Victorian house with lots of greenery. We had even more greenery; we dined in the atrium.

My wife gave a rave review of the flown-in New England salmon. I had rack of lamb served on a port wine sauce with mint jelly that was wonderful. And our friend, a gourmet, gave high marks to the Raintree Shrimp Scampi.

A fun place to eat dinner is the Saltwater Cowboys, a rustic St. Augustine restaurant near the saltwater marsh. It’s a good place to watch the sun go down. The food is excellent and moderately priced, with good service and excellent Key lime pie.

Le Pavillon is another impressive restaurant in a stately old residence. It offers French, Swiss and German food, and a good choice of wines. While I was at Flagler College, my wife took a break from sightseeing and shopping to have lunch at the Santa Maria restaurant overlooking Matanzas Bay and historic Lions Bridge, which connects the mainland to Anastasia Island. She recommends the red snapper and Minorcan chowder. Patrons at some window tables can feed the fish swimming a few feet below, through little doors built into the walls. The restaurant even furnishes the fish food.

One of the charming shops near the old city gates that protected residents long ago is the Christmas Store, open year-round. Among the ornaments, toys, Santas and other offerings, my wife found two cookbooks that she bought for her collection: “Florida! Classic Crab Cooking” by Joyce LaFray and “Seminole Indian Recipes,” with recipes collected by Marina Polvay.

The Seminole recipes include chilled seagrape soup, swamp cabbage salad, seafood corn pudding, octopus fritters, wild boar stew, alligator tail steak, fried frog legs, roast wild turkey, Indian pudding, sassafras jelly, ascerola cherry jelly and pumpkin pancakes.

The Seminoles have a significant place in Florida’s history, having settled in the state in the 18th Century after migrating from Georgia and Alabama. They made a desperate effort to regain control of their homeland from the Americans in the Seminole War of 1836.

Two Seminole leaders, Osceola and Coacoochee, and several warriors were captured just south of St. Augustine after being invited to come and talk to the Americans. All were imprisoned in Castillo de San Marcos. Coacoochee and 20 of his companions managed to escape, but Osceola was transferred to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, where he died.

Highlights of the history of St. Augustine are included in another cookbook that my wife found, “Food Favorites of St. Augustine” by Joan Adams Wickham.

The cookbook tells of the migration in 1777 of nearly 600 people from the island of Minorca (now part of Spain) to St. Augustine, where their descendants live today. The recipes of the book include Minorcan, English, Spanish and American dishes.

GUIDEBOOK

Historic St. Augustine

Getting there: From Los Angeles, Delta, USAir and Continental offer service to Jacksonville, Fla., about an hour’s drive north of St. Augustine. With seven days’ advance purchase, midweek prices range from $318 to $438 round trip.

Accommodations: Range from luxury resort hotels with golf, tennis and meeting facilities to inns or beachside motels.

St. Augustine’s historic district, just across from the Castillo de San Marcos fort and Matanzas Bay, has numerous bed and breakfast inns. Some are 200 years old. Prices range $55-$135 per night.

For more information: Contact the St. Augustine Chamber of Commerce, 52 Castillo Drive, St. Augustine, Fla. 32085, (904) 829-5681.