Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1893 — FLORIDA’S STATE BUILDINU. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FLORIDA’S STATE BUILDINU.

Jne of the Mott Peculiar Structures la Jackson Park. Three hundred years ago the foundations of a Spanish fort were laid within the confines of St. Augustine, Fla. At the present moment work is progressing on a buildltfg patterned after it in every detail, and which, when completed, will be the State’s representative structure at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Old Fort San Marco, now Fort Marion, is the historic fortress which has stood the storms of battle and the elements for so many hundred years. Its pygmy counterpart in the Exposition grounds will have become dust within a space of time which would not add one dingier shade to the massive stones frowning from the sea wall of St. Augustine upon the blue, dancing waves of the Atlantic. Fort San Marco was commenced by the Spaniards in 1592, and was 164 years in building. It is built of coquina quarried on Anastasia Island, and occupies the north end of a sea wall nearly one mile in length. This wall is built of the same material as the fort, and at its south end are barricks for the United States soldiery stationed at St. Augustine.

The work of building tie lort fell upon negro slaves, Indians and prisiners of war. Every stone laid in it represented the misery of toiling, suffering humanity during a period of a century and a half. When completed, however, it was considered a masterpiece. While in the possession of the British it was considered the prettiest fort in the king’s domonions. Of this grim old fortress, with its moats, barbicans, drawbridges, frowning bastions and its mysterious dungeons in which, years ago, two skeletons were found in cages, Margaret Deland says: “There is no watch now; the fort has nothing to fear. Visitors come and go, or down in the grass-grown moat a thin, white donkey wanders about, cropping hungrily at the tufted thistles that stand in the angles of the barbican or crowd like sentinels around a stone which may have tumbled from the ramparts. The offensive attitude of these thistles, brave in green and silver and with pink cockades, is the only warlike thing about the peaceful fort.” As the building approaches completion its peculiar outlines make it a prominent feature of the north end of the Exposition grounds.

THE FLORIDA BUILDING—OLD FORT MARION