Bayfront seafood restaurant in a 1790 Spanish colonial home originally built by Don Miguel Ysnardy; relocated to its current Avenida Menendez site in 1961.
118 Avenida Menendez, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Mid-tier full-service restaurant pricing; cocktail bar on premises.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Ground-floor dining is accessible; the building has multiple levels and the second-floor dining is reached by stairs.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1790 · Don Miguel Ysnardy residence (1790) · General William J. Worth family connection · 1961 building relocation to bayfront · St. Augustine historic preservation
The building now occupied by O.C. White's Seafood & Spirits was constructed in 1790 by Don Miguel Ysnardy, a prominent figure in late-Second Spanish Period St. Augustine. Originally a private residence, the structure later served as one of the first hotels in the city.
The widow and daughter of U.S. Army Brigadier General William Jenkins Worth — for whom Lake Worth and the city of Fort Worth, Texas are named — purchased the building in 1868. The Worth family sold it to a cigar maker in 1904. George L. Potter, who once owned Potter's Wax Museum, purchased the building in 1948.
In 1961, the entire structure was moved to its current bayfront location at 118 Avenida Menendez, where it overlooks Matanzas Bay near the Bridge of Lions. Building relocation was a relatively common preservation strategy in mid-20th-century St. Augustine, allowing colonial-era structures to be saved from demolition in the central business district.
The O.C. White family acquired the building in 1992 and opened O.C. White's Seafood & Spirits, a full-service restaurant. The restaurant's website explicitly acknowledges the building's paranormal reputation and dedicates a page on its official site to the topic.
Sources
Per Ghost City Tours and the restaurant's own published 'Hauntings' page, O.C. White's Seafood & Spirits has at least two named or partially named paranormal subjects.
The first is Margaret Worth, the widow of U.S. Army Brigadier General William Jenkins Worth, who purchased the building with her daughter in 1868. Per the restaurant's published narrative, staff and guests have reported seeing a woman in a large period dress descending the stairs and walking into the kitchen, where she disappears. The kitchen has no exit door, which the restaurant explicitly notes in its description.
The second figure is identified by the restaurant as Colonel Sprague, husband of Worth's daughter. He is reported in the second-floor men's restroom mirror — described by witnesses as wearing a bowler hat — and is said to vanish on closer inspection.
Ghost City Tours adds a layer of additional reports: moving objects in the dining rooms and unexplained sounds in the stairwells. The bayfront block on Avenida Menendez where O.C. White's stands is described in St. Augustine ghost-tour literature as among the densest concentrations of reported activity in the city; we treat that as marketing context rather than evidentiary support.
The key complication for this site is that the building was relocated in 1961, which means any paranormal phenomena reported in the building today have traveled with the structure rather than being tied to the soil at 118 Avenida Menendez. We note that physical caveat without dismissing the reports.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Dine in the 1790 Spanish colonial home of Don Miguel Ysnardy, now relocated to St. Augustine's bayfront on Avenida Menendez. Seafood-forward menu; staff are accustomed to questions about the building's paranormal reputation.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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