Ximenez-Fatio House
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Ximenez-Fatio House
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| Location | St. Augustine, Florida |
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| Coordinates | 29°53′28″N 81°18′42″W / 29.89112°N 81.31171°WCoordinates: 29°53′28″N 81°18′42″W / 29.89112°N 81.31171°W |
| Built | 1797-1802 |
| NRHP reference # | 73002135 |
| Added to NRHP | July 25, 1973 |
Ximenez-Fatio House Museum is one of the best-preserved and most authentic Second Spanish Period (1783-1821) 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 (formerly Hospital 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 (NSCDA-FL). 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.
The two-story main house was built by Andres Ximenez (an alternate spelling of Jimenez), a merchant of Spanish birth who married Juana Pellicer, daughter of Francisco Pellicer, a leader of the Minorcan community in St. Augustine. The property's modern name references Ximenez as well as the last historic owner of record: Louisa Fatio (FAY-she-oh), who ran the boarding house as Miss Fatio's. Louisa purchased the house in 1855, becoming the last of three successive women owners during its years as a boarding house. Their success contributes to the historical significance of the property, because this was a time when few American women owned property in their own names or managed a respectable business.
The house's adaptability to commercial activities is due in part to its size and central location near the plaza and the bayfront. Andres Ximenez built the structure to accommodate his family upstairs and support them through undertakings housed downstairs. His wife Juana probably assisted him in running a general store, tavern, billiard table and lottery. The Ximenez family did not occupy the house for long. By 1806, both parents and two of their five minor children had died. For a number of years following, Juana's father managed the property on his grandchildren's behalf.
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