St. Francis Barracks

Franciscan missionaries originally settled this site in 1588, and for 175 years the Convento de San Francisco served as headquarters for men working on behalf of the Spanish king to bring the Catholic faith to the Native Americans of la Florida. After Governor James Moore's siege of St. Augustine in 1702 destroyed the mission buildings, they were rebuilt with coquina from the king's quarry on Anastasia Island. When the British took possession of Florida in 1763 and made St. Augustine the capital of East Florida, military authorities occupied the former mission, converted the chapel built in the 1730s and 1740s into barracks, and renovated the friary with fireplaces and enlarged living quarters. After the Spanish returned to St. Augustine in 1783, the Franciscans briefly reoccupied the site before soldiers of the Spanish garrison replaced them. In 1821 Florida was ceded to the United States, and the U.S. Army held the military post as a federal facility until 1907, when the Florida National Guard moved its headquarters there from Tallahassee.

St. Augustine, Florida · United States