A brazen vandal spray-painted the front of a historic St. Augustine building and threw a brick through one of its windows Friday night, shocking witnesses.
The attack came just hours after a St. Augustine board approved demolition work at the property, which once served as a local jail.
The current owners plan to create a private residence on the top floor of the Aviles Street structure, with commercial space below.
Contractors told the Historic Architectural Review Board Friday that the owners had invested $100,000 attempting to salvage the entire building, but ultimately determined that it was structurally unsound and could not be saved entirely.
That night, a man wearing a jumpsuit and mask threw a brick through a window and spray-painted a cross along with other symbols on the building’s facade.
The brick was wrapped in plastic and marked with the words “Sorry Fredrick Douglass.”
A bystander began recording the suspect from a nearby restaurant, capturing him casually defacing the structure despite the presence of witnesses.
Chad Schwaninger, a contractor on the project, told The Citizen that the man spoke briefly with a waitress who questioned his actions. Wearing glasses and a mask, he claimed to be from a religious organization and told her to leave him be.
After finishing the spray-painting, the man hurled the brick through one of the windows and left the scene.
Schwaninger said a nearby business alerted him to the incident.
“It surprised the hell out of me,” he said. “He didn’t care that anyone was watching. And he broke one of the windows we were trying to save.”
He covered the damage and assisted police in filing a report.
The City will allow the owners to remove the second story on the front portion of the building, but other existing walls must be preserved pending future reviews.
Schwaninger said the building is currently being prepared for the partial demolition.
The reason behind the vandal’s invocation of the civil rights leader is unclear. Douglass famously gave a speech in St. Augustine in 1889, but was never imprisoned in the city.
According to local historians, the structure originally served as a small municipal jail, built in the 1880s to house petty criminals.
