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21-702: The Society has been a primary force in the preservation and care of four historic Spanish colonial homes, including the González-Alvarez House (The Oldest House), the Tovar House, and the Fernandez-Llambias House —all on Saint Francis Street—as well as the Segui-Kirby Smith House on the corner of Aviles Street and Artillery Lane. SAHS publishes El Escribano: The St. Augustine Journal of History , as well as

42-430: A clapboarded exterior. It is covered by a hip roof finished with wooden shingles. The building is reflective of multiple periods of alteration and enlargement, during different periods of colonial administration. The land on which this house stands has been occupied since the 17th century, when a building is documented to have been standing here. The present house's earliest period of construction dates to about 1723, when

63-459: A construction history dating to about 1723, it is believed to be the oldest surviving house in St. Augustine. It is also an important example of St. Augustine's Spanish colonial architectural style, with later modifications by English owners. It was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1970. The house is now owned by the St. Augustine Historical Society and is open for public tours as part of

84-455: A new facility in 1984. Since January 1955, El Escribano ("The Scribe ") has been the annual publication of SAHS sent to members and libraries. The name is derived from the city's Spanish colonial history: Gonz%C3%A1lez-Alvarez House The González–Álvarez House , also known as The Oldest House , is a historic house museum at 14 St. Francis Street in St. Augustine , Florida . With

105-469: A tabby revival in the second quarter of the 19th century sometimes referred to as "Spalding tabby". Another revival occurred with the development of Jekyll Island in the 1880s. Limestone to make building lime was not locally available to early settlers, so lime was imported or made from oyster shells. Shell middens along the coast were a supply of shells to make tabby, which diffused from two primary centers or hearths: one at Saint Augustine, Florida, and

126-404: Is a closed-stack library with a small reference collection in the main reading room, and is free to the public. The two hundred and thirty-year-old building was built as a private residence and was the birthplace of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith (1824). It was given in trust to the St. Augustine Library Association in 1895, and was a free public library until Saint Johns County erected

147-535: The Oldest House Museum Complex . Evidence can be seen of the Spanish, British, and American occupations of St. Augustine. The González–Álvarez House is located in a residential area south of downtown St. Augustine, on the north side of St. Francis Street between Charlotte and Marine Streets. It is a two-story structure, its first floor built of coquina and its upper level framed in wood with

168-606: The Society's newsletter the East Florida Gazette . The González-Alvarez House is the oldest surviving Spanish colonial dwelling in St. Augustine, with evidence dating the site's occupancy from the 1600s, and the present house to the early 1700s. The house is located at 14 Saint Francis Street and exhibits both Spanish and British colonial architectural details and styles. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. The Oldest House Museum Complex includes

189-583: The Spanish tabique de ostión (literally, "adobe wall of oyster [shell]"). There is evidence that North African Moors brought a predecessor form of tabby to Spain when they invaded the peninsula, but there is also evidence that the Iberian use is earlier and that it spread from there south to Morocco. A form of tabby is used in Morocco today and some tabby structures survive in Spain, though in both instances

210-788: The Tovar House, the Webb Museum, the Page L Edwards Gallery, an ornamental garden, and a museum store. First exhibited as a house museum in 1892, the building was acquired in 1918 by the Saint Augustine Historical Society. The SAHS Research Library at the Segui-Kirby Smith House specializes in the history of St. Augustine, colonial East Florida , and Saint Johns County . The collection includes maps, photographs, vertical subject files, church records, circuit court cases, city government records, manuscript collections, circuit court records, and biographical files. It

231-430: The aggregate is granite, not oyster shells. It is likely that 16th-century Spanish explorers first brought tabby (which appears as tabee , tapis , tappy and tapia in early documents) to the coast of Florida in the sixteenth century. Tapia is Spanish for 'mud wall' and Arabic tabbi means 'a mixture of mortar and lime' or African tabi . In fact, the mortar used to chink the earliest cabins in this area

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252-586: The east side. The latter allows prevailing southeasterly winds to cool the structure, while the thick walls provide insulation from hot weather. The interior floors are made of tabby concrete . After the British took over Florida in 1763, the González family left for Cuba . In 1774 the house was purchased by Major Joseph Peavett, an Englishman, who added the wood-frame second story, and put glass windows into openings previously only enclosed by wooden shutters. It

273-504: The first floor was built, and it was documented as being occupied by Tomás González y Hernández, an artilleryman at the Castillo de San Marcos , and his family. The design of this house is one that was adopted by Spanish colonial settlers to deal with local living conditions and available building materials. It was built of readily available coquina limestone, with its main thick walls oriented east–west, and has an open covered loggia on

294-427: The other at Beaufort, South Carolina. The British tradition began later (some time close to, but earlier than, 1700, upon introduction of the techniques from Spanish Florida) than the Spanish (1580), and spread far more widely as a building material, reaching at least as far north as Staten Island , New York, where it can be found in the still-standing Abraham Manee House , erected circa 1670. Beaufort, South Carolina,

315-447: The oyster shells into quicklime . The quicklime was then slaked (hydrated) and combined with more shells, sand, and water. It was poured or tamped into wood forms called cradles, built up in layers in a similar manner to rammed earth . Tabby was used in place of bricks, which could not be made locally because of the absence of local clay. Tabby was used like concrete for floors, foundations, columns, roofs. Besides replacing bricks, it

336-541: The remains of Spanish missions, even though local residents had earlier identified the ruins as those of late-18th century plantation buildings. The fact that the ruins were of structures built after the establishment of the Georgia Colony by Great Britain was not fully accepted by historians until late in the 20th century. With the exception of St. Augustine and, possibly, a few other important places, Spanish mission buildings were built with wooden posts supporting

357-731: The roof and walls of palmetto thatch , wattle and daub or planks , or left open. The LaPointe Krebs House, also known as the Old Spanish Fort (Pascagoula, Mississippi) is an extant tabby structure on the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. The house was constructed in 1757 in Louisiane, during the French Colonial period. Tabby was used in the West Indies , including the islands of Antigua and Barbados . The labor-intensive process depended on slave labor to crush and burn

378-866: Was a mixture of mud and Spanish moss . The oldest known example of tabby concrete in North America is the Spanish Fort San Antón de Carlos located on Mound Key in Florida . Some researchers believe that English colonists developed their own process independently of the Spanish. James Oglethorpe is credited with introducing "Oglethorpe tabby" into Georgia after seeing Spanish forts in Florida and encouraging its use, using it himself for his house near Fort Frederica . Later Thomas Spalding , who had grown up in Oglethorpe's house, led

399-462: Was both the primary center for British tabby and the location of the earliest British tabby in the southeastern US. It was here that the British tradition first developed, and from this hearth tabby eventually spread throughout the sea island district. Herbert Eugene Bolton , John Tate Lanning , and other historians believed, from the mid-19th century into the middle of the 20th century, that tabby ruins in coastal Georgia and northeastern Florida were

420-481: Was further enlarged by the third owner, Geronimo Alvarez, who added a two-story wing built of coquina. The house was taken over by the St. Augustine Historical Society in 1918, which undertook its restoration to a late 19th-century appearance in 1959–60, reversing a number of intervening alterations. Tabby concrete Tabby is a type of concrete made by burning oyster shells to create lime , then mixing it with water, sand, ash and broken oyster shells. Tabby

441-461: Was used by early Spanish settlers in present-day Florida, then by British colonists primarily in coastal South Carolina and Georgia . It is a man-made analogue of coquina , a naturally-occurring sedimentary rock derived from shells and also used for building. Revivals in the use of tabby spread northward and continued into the early 19th century. Tabby was normally protected with a coating of plaster or stucco . "Tabby" or "tapia" derives from

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