Only 30 houses in St. Augustine's historic district pre-date 1821, and the Avero House at 41 St. George Street is one of them. This plot was owned by the Avero family, Minorcan Spaniards, during the First Spanish Period (1565–1763), and the family occupied the property from as early as 1712. The current coquina structure dates to circa the 1740s and is the site where a Minorcan chapel once stood.
Look closely: the two-story house has coquina walls laid in horizontal courses with lime mortar, plastered inside and out, an open loggia on the southeast, and a flat roof finished with copper scuppers. A 1763 map even shows a U-shaped plan here. After the Spanish evacuation in 1763 the house saw use in the British Period, and in 1777 it served as a chapel for Catholic refugees from the failed New Smyrna colony—primarily Minorcans, Italians, and Greeks—under Father Pedro Camps.
Restored in the late 1970s, it now houses the St. Photios Greek Orthodox National Shrine, honoring the Greek indentured settlers of 1768. Picture Father Pedro Camps leading Minorcan, Italian, and Greek refugees in worship here, before the coquina walls became a Greek Orthodox shrine.