HISTORY & HERITAGE
St. Augustine Historic District
St. Johns County · Atlantic Coast
A 113-acre National Historic Landmark district holding the Spanish colonial street plan of the oldest European city in the country.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
St. Augustine was founded by Spain in 1565, making it the oldest permanently settled European city on the mainland of North America north of Mexico. What the historic district protects is not only the buildings but the plan itself. The narrow streets, the central plaza and the way the lots run all date from the first Spanish period, which ended in 1763, and that pattern survived every later occupation. The district covers 113 acres bounded by Cordova, Orange and St. Francis Streets and Matanzas Bay, and was named a National Historic Landmark on April 15, 1970, with the boundary formally drawn in 1986. About half the buildings in it predate 1925, many in Spanish Colonial or Moorish Revival styles. The Gonzalez-Alvarez House, from about 1723, is the oldest surviving house in the city, and Aviles Street is the oldest archaeologically documented street in the country. The Castillo de San Marcos and the Cathedral Basilica stand within it
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