St. Augustine, Florida
February 17, 2022
The mission of the St. Augustine Historical Society is to acquire, preserve, and interpret the historical influence of St. Augustine and its sphere of influence for the benefit of the public through its stewardship of historic building and collections, research, publications, and educational programming.
Oldest House Website
Exterior 1
Exterior 2
Artifact 1
This was Richard Twine's 1886 Rochester Optical Co. Glass Plate Camera. Twine was St. Augustine's first African American photographer. This camera captured numerous events of the lives of the citizens of Lincolnville. This African American community in St. Augustine may have been otherwise left undocumented.
Artifact 2
In 1930, men's swim suits were made from wool. They often had a white cloth belt with a metal buckle. This group of men, wearing the in-fashion suits, were part of the American Red Cross Life Savings Corps in St. Augustine in 1930. Surfers became associated with hippies in the 1970s and canvas swim shorts grew more popular for men.
Visual In Conversation 1
https://www.nps.gov/articles/prwi-field-school-partnership.htm
The Oldest House has an outdoor kitchen with a display of how it typically would look. Although not seen much anymore, outdoor kitchens were common in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was a technique to prevent house fires, which were once extremely prevalent as a result of open flame cooking and heating. An outside kitchen lowered the temperature in the house during the hot summer months and kept cooking odors out of the main house. It reminded me of an outhouse because the restrooms at the summer camp I went to were outside, and we had to walk a couple hundred feet to use the bathroom.Most outhouses were built between 50 and 150 feet away from the main house, generally facing away from the house, to prevent the odor from reaching the house.
Visual In Conversation 2
https://www.nfi.edu/when-was-the-camera-invented/
Twine's camera was once invented in the mid 1800s. Therefore, cameras had been, and continued to be, greatly revolutionized. The first camera was not a camera at all, but rather small dark rooms with light entering only through a small hole. Eventually, the camera became a took to take pictures instead of directing light to make a projection. The photographic camera was developed in 1816 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Not long after, Louis Daguerre invented the Daguerrotype, which was a much more efficient camera device at the time. Mirror Cameras were an innovation of the Daguerrotype. Richard Leach Maddox devised instantaneous exposures, which served as the forerunner for Polaroid cameras. Finally, The use of roll film cameras was refined by George Eastman, and analog photography attained its pinnacle. The first digital camera was introduced in 1999 as a camera that instantly produces high-quality images shown through a viewfinder, which allows its users to visualize the scenes they're photographing.
Literature In Conversation
Excerpt from Floridanos, Menorcans, Cattle-Whip Crackers: Poetry of St. Augustine by Ann Browning Masters
"Do you remember how my Daddy / rode Margie's old tricycle drunk / the night before she married? / How my grandfather would stand / in his / nightshirt on the balcony / and call me down this very street? / How Blanche and Grace said darl-ling / and e-nun-ci-a-ted / like good Me-nor-cans?"
Through her writing, Masters tries to preserve the lives of these people through memories and events. The Oldest House is seeking the same intentions: to preserve lives. Only, The Oldest House is doing so through objects and places. The house is set to be similar to how it would have been when people lived in it. It takes you through a historic journey of several time periods with several owners and residents.
Creative Component
Since people used to not be able to read, there was no use for numbers and letting on playing cards. I edited numbers onto some of the cards in the Oldest House to show the merging of time periods in the house.
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