Architecture

Spanish Influences.

The most lasting contribution of Spanish colonists to American culture is in the field of architecture. Though the early architecture of Florida differs from that of the Southwest and California, both are derived from the tastes of the seventeenth-century Spanish court, as they were transmitted to the New World by Catholic missionary-priests.

Florida.

The earliest surviving buildings in Florida date from around the middle of the seventeenth century. Of these the most notable is the Castillo de San Marcos in Saint Augustine, begun in 1672 and often called the finest structure of its kind in the United States. Built around a one-hundred-square-foot central courtyard, this castle has spear-shaped bastions at its four corners, massive walls made of coquina (a form of limestone), and forty-foot moat. Comparing favorably to fortresses constructed in Europe at the same time, the Castillo was successfully defended...