1798 Spanish colonial coquina boarding house where multiple guests died, now open for candlelight after-hours tours
20 Aviles St, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Admission charged for daytime museum tours; after-hours candlelight tours priced separately. See venue website for current rates.
Access
Limited Access
Historic coquina building with uneven floors and stairs; exterior courtyard accessible
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1798 · National Society of the Colonial Dames of America museum property · St. Augustine Plan colonial architecture · Second Spanish Period (1783–1821) construction
Andres Ximenez arrived in St. Augustine during Florida's Second Spanish Period and acquired the lot on Aviles Street by the 1790s. Construction of the main coquina house and detached kitchen ran from approximately 1797 to 1802. Ximenez ran a general store and tavern from the ground floor — a commercial combination typical of St. Augustine's merchant class — while his family occupied the upper story.
Ximenez died by 1806, as evidenced by his will dated April 10 of that year. His wife Juana Pellicer Ximenez predeceased him, and two of their five minor children died before the estate was settled. The property passed through several subsequent owners before Margaret Cook took it over around 1830 and converted it to a boarding house, a function it would serve for decades. Cook's tenure ended in 1838, the year in which Eliza Whitehurst, who had been managing the establishment as 'Mrs. Whitehurst's boarding house,' also died on the premises.
Sarah Petty Anderson held the property from 1838 to 1855, followed by Louisa Fatio, who became the best-known of the building's female proprietors and managed the boarding house until her death in 1875. The building takes its hyphenated name from Ximenez and Fatio, the first and last of its documented principal occupants.
The structure is an example of 'St. Augustine Plan' architecture, blending Spanish Colonial and Federal-style elements. It is built from coquina — a sedimentary rock quarried from Anastasia Island — and is among the city's older surviving residential buildings. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America acquired it in 1939 and operates it as a museum today.
Sources
The boarding house function of the Ximenez-Fatio property meant that ill travelers regularly took rooms and died there — a pattern common to St. Augustine's inns during periods of yellow fever and other epidemics that swept the Florida coast in the 18th and 19th centuries. The deaths documented in property records include Juana Pellicer Ximenez, two of the Ximenez children, Eliza Whitehurst in 1838, and Louisa Fatio in 1875.
The venue's after-hours programming presents these documented deaths alongside visitor and staff accounts of paranormal activity. Reports cluster in the upstairs rooms and the detached kitchen, which predates the main house in some accounts of the property's construction. A figure associated with one of the female proprietors is the most commonly reported entity; the venue's promotional materials refer to this presence as 'Miss Madison,' though this name does not appear in the historical record of the building and should be understood as interpretive lore rather than documented fact.
Cold spots in the corridor between the kitchen and main house, inexplicable sounds from empty rooms, and a sense of being watched in the ground-floor parlor are among the most frequently cited visitor accounts. The candlelight tour format — low light, period furnishings, documented death history — contributes to the atmospheric intensity that has made the building a regular stop on St. Augustine's paranormal circuit.
Notable Entities
Guided tour of the 1798 coquina structure, one of the oldest surviving buildings in St. Augustine. Covers the history of Andres Ximenez's general store and tavern, the successive female proprietors who ran it as a boarding house, and the multiple deaths documented among guests and residents. Open Monday–Tuesday, Thursday–Saturday 10 AM–5 PM; Wednesday 11 AM–5 PM; closed Sunday.
Evening tour by candlelight sharing the building's documented dark history and paranormal accounts. Check the venue website for schedule and availability.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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