page_title: Ximenez-Fatio House
section_title: Restoration and interpretation
hierarchical_section_title: Ximenez-Fatio House / Restoration and interpretation
caption_attribution_description: Dining room, Ximenez-Fatio House
context_page_description: Ximenez-Fatio House Museum is one of the best-preserved and most authentic Second Spanish Period residential buildings in St. Augustine, Florida. In 1973, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was designated a Florida Heritage Landmark in 2012. The museum complex sits just south of the city's central Plaza de la Constitución at 20 Aviles Street, the oldest archaeologically documented street in the United States. It is located at the center of Old Town, the city's oldest continuously occupied community. Since 1939, the property has been privately owned and managed by The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of Florida. Through their efforts, it was restored and interpreted to reflect its function as a fashionable boarding house during Florida's first tourist boom, which began after 1821. The property is a historic house museum, furnished and presented to tell stories of the visitors who lodged there, the women who owned and managed it, and how people lived during Florida's territorial period.
context_section_description: For three decades after they acquired the property, the NSCDA-FL worked on repairs. In 1970, the house was awarded a National Trust for Historic Preservation grant. It enabled NSCDA-FL to hire architect Charles E. Peterson, considered one of the founding fathers of historic preservation in the United States. Previously, Peterson had established the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and was a founding member of the Association for Preservation Technology (APT). He visited the Ximenez-Fatio House twice in 1972. His observations were published in an article titled "Tour of Ximenez-Fatio House" in the St. Augustine Record on January 8 and 9, 1972.
  Peterson was a stickler for accurate restoration and truthful interpretation at a time when these were novel ideas. He taught the Dames how to find their interpretation period. Years of in-depth research followed. NSCDA-FL research committee members studied city maps, historic newspaper articles, letters and journals; compared details in related houses such as St. Augustine's Second Spanish Period Don Manuel Solana House; analyzed artifacts found underground; and consulted the findings of historians and architects.  Their discoveries led them to focus on a little-known time in St. Augustine's history — the boarding house era, which was at its peak during the 1830s and 1840s.  Following Peterson's advice, the Dames also documented house features in detail, published information to attract interest from the academic community, and got the property listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
  Meanwhile, restoration efforts continued. Peterson introduced the Dames to architect Blair Reeves. Through Reeves, they hired architect Herschel Shepard. Shepard later helped restore the historic 1902 Florida State Capitol in Tallahassee, Fort Foster in Hillsborough County and other important sites in Florida. He was involved in Ximenez-Fatio House research and restoration from 1973 to 1979.
  Based on physical evidence such as construction details, nail chronology and saw marks rather than solely on stylistic features, Shepard believed that most of the remodeling undertaken to transform the residence into a boarding house occurred between 1830 and 1840. He investigated features throughout the house with the object of understanding how the house was modified over time.
  In 1975, the NSCDA-FL was awarded a National Trust for Historic Preservation grant to hire historical consultant William Seale. Seale was previously curator of cultural history at the Smithsonian Institution and a nationally known historian and author. He helped guide the Dames in their interpretation. Seale provided a summary of how he would interpret each room of the boarding house, including appropriate furnishings, room arrangements and resources for further research. The acquisitions committee then began a long search for house contents. Their primary guideline was that all pieces purchased for the house must be documented as having been available in St. Augustine during the interpretation period. Items were sourced from antique stores, estate sales and private collections in Northeast Florida, Southeast Georgia and elsewhere.
  Seale's most recent visit to the property was in 2006. In his follow-up report, he called the boarding house interpretation executed by the Dames in the 1970s "as valid as ever, reflecting current interests in the history field over the nation." Seale conjectured that Ximenez-Fatio House Museum may be the first historic house in the country to feature the story of a succession of women surviving economically in what was considered a man's world, and commercializing their domestic skills to do so.
  Ongoing preservation of Ximenez-Fatio House is funded through grants, NSCDA-FL dues and private donations. Joseph K. Oppermann is currently lead architect for the house.
caption: The dining room table is set with 19th century china patterns discovered during digs on the property.
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