of corn in return for gift trinkets. Timucuan populations slid lower and
lower as Spanish hunger and military requirements grew, so colonial gov-
ernors and Franciscans early resorted to de facto enslavement. Big mission
farms provided large crops of corn as requirement, or else. Natives also
operated ferries across the region’s many waterways for the Spanish. And
Timucuans excavated and cut blocks of coquina in the Anastasia quarries
and barged them over to St. Augustine to construct the Castillo and other
longer-lasting built features of the Ancient City. Today the island itself is
almost completely built up, suburbanized except for its commercial zones.
In some of the suburbs, behind recently built houses, unexpected charm is
to be found in dark ponds—formerly coquina mines—many of which are
now habitat for alligators.
For some time before they were forced to mine coquina, however, the
Seloys took their revenge on the Spanish of St. Augustine by impoverish-
ing their domestic architecture. According to the principal student of the
town’s housing, harassing natives prevented logging and sawmilling crews
from replenishing lumber supplies always needed for repair and rebuild-
ing. For the longest period, St. Augustine’s architecture was miserably,
shabbily bare—jerry-built shacks of rough wood roofed in palm thatch.
Such structures rotted quickly, if they did not first fall apart, blow down in
heavy winds, or burn. Later, when forced labor provided soft blocks of co-
quina, the bounty went into the Castillo, seldom housing, except that for
the governor and treasurer. Bricks, the stuff of near-permanence and sig-
nifier of prosperity in Virginia, were almost unseen in Florida, where clay
and straw were scarce. Cuba supplied but a few. The beginnings of archi-
tectural distinction in St. Augustine correspond to shrinking numbers of
native warriors, secure wood supplies, and sufficient security and building
skills to adapt northern Spanish house forms and employ coastal materials
such as lime made from oyster shells (for plastering wood and waterproof-
ing coquina).^6
The ‘‘St. Augustine Look’’ was developed by early in the eighteenth cen-
tury, when Castillo de San Marcos was completed, when the town was safe
for longer periods, and when Spanish administrators and others had the
wherewithal to occupy offices and homes befitting their status. A pleasing
look it was and is, in becoming variety. These were buildings of stone or
wood or both; one, two, or two-and-a-half stories; square or rectangular.
Houses had walls and fences, never doors, on the street, often with a charm-
ing balcony above. Entry was made via a fence door around the side, into an