Pan American Center: Heritage Lost
by Matt Armstrong, Digital Preservation Curator, Government House Research Collection, Univeristy of Florida.
The city of St. Augustine, Florida has been engaged in a bare-knuckle boxing match for superlatives for as long as anyone can remember. The goal is to set the “Ancient City” far apart from other settlements, regardless of the convolution of the title, thus taking pride in the wordy designation as “the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States.” The city goes to great pains to specifically identify with its Spanish progenitors, as opposed to the British colonizers that dominate American history textbooks. Thus, visitors are often presented with a narrow view of St. Augustine’s place in Iberian Spanish history.
There was, however, a decade-long span when city officials and historians made a considerable effort to connect with the rest of the continental Americas, rather than be set apart from them. In the 1960s, they envisioned St. Augustine as a gateway between the United States and the cultures of Latin America. The keystone for this bridge was the Pan American Center, on the northeast corner of St. George Street and Hypolita Street.
In 1959, the St. Augustine Historical Restoration and Preservation Commission, a state agency, began transforming downtown for the impending Quadricentennial Celebration in 1965. Working in tandem with the National St. Augustine Quadricentennial Commission, they sought to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the city's founding by reviving interest in the Spanish colonial period, its architecture, and its heritage. When President John F. Kennedy established the Quadricentennial Commission, he hoped to connect to this shared American experience:
“When I recall how Colonial Williamsburg has served so effectively as a symbol of the bond between English-speaking peoples on both sides of the Atlantic, I can see how valuable it will be to have a similar symbol of the cultural heritage which came to us from Hispanic-American sources. This can be a most important new symbolic bond with our Latin-American neighbors to the south, as well as to Spain across the ocean.”
As the Preservation Commission purchased property and restored historic buildings (or, in some cases, demolished existing houses and reconstructed representations of what may have existed there historically) the downtown began to drastically change. Within the first ten years of the program, the Restoration Commission had preserved, restored, or reconstructed 29 structures. One of these structures, the Marin-Hassett House, was to serve as the home of the Pan American Center.