October 21, 2016

Old City Gate

  

I’ve been through the old City Gate a time or two, and it wasn’t until I was writing this post that I actually read what the historical marker said. I wasn’t aware the gate was once ironbound or that it was pretty impressive in its heyday. You can see that the palm logs probably aren’t the originals from 1808 (actually, I’m sure they’re not) but you get the idea of how the gate once looked. In the olden times, if you got caught outside the gate after curfew, you were stuck there until morning. Considering that there’s a supposedly haunted cemetery and a supposedly haunted 17^TH century fort visible from this very spot, I guess your degree of belief in the paranormal would have dictated how well you handled being stranded outside the city walls.

Authentic Old Drug Store (now Potter’s Wax Museum)

I haven’t been to Potter’s so I can’t give a review, but concerning the building itself, it’s rather interesting. It has stood on this street corner since 1886 (the eerie Tolomato Cemetery just beyond the parking lot is a lot older than that, and worth a visit). Once known as the Speissegger Drugstore, it later served as a tourist venue featuring old pharmaceutical paraphernalia. (I went. I toured. I wasn’t impressed). Recently it became the home of Potter’s Wax Museum, which you may have visited at its former King Street location. One of the things I find fascinating about this building is the front door, which is actually built into the corner instead of being in one wall or the other.

(c) 2015-2016 St. Augustine Fridays