THE HISTORY

Over 250 years ago…

A city plan was developed for Pensacola by Elias Durnford that still inspires today! The EGD project will showcase a landscaping, streetscaping, and planting plan unique to the City of Pensacola, and befitting of the garden lots originally planned by Durnford for Garden Street.

GROWING SINCE 1764

In 1764…

shortly after the British took control of West Florida from the Spanish, Elias Durnford, a British military officer and civil engineer, was appointed Commanding Engineer and Surveyor-General of the new British West Florida. One of Durnford’s charges was to survey Pensacola and lay out a new plan for the city. Durnford’s plan for Pensacola featured a traditional street grid as well as a large public square with a star-shaped stockade fort at its center. Durnford’s public square reached east to west from today’s Palafox Street to Alcaniz Street and north to south from Intendencia Street to the Pensacola Bay. As Pensacola grew, much of Durnford’s public square was converted to residential and commercial lots, but the two marching grounds from the military fort remained as the City’s two public squares, now known as Plaza Ferdinand VII and Seville Square.

In Durnford’s plan, the Southern border of the City was Pensacola Bay, and the northern border of the City was Garden Street, then called Conway Street. South of Garden Street, Durnford designed for the City’s commercial and residential building lots, and north of Garden Street, Durnford laid out larger garden lots that were issued as companion lots to a building lot once it was improved. These garden lots were cleared and then utilized by Pensacola families to cultivate and grow some of their food supply. The east-west thoroughfare that was established along Durnford’s stretch of garden lots was later appropriately named Garden Street.

Elias Durnford’s original vision for the garden lots north of Garden Street was growth, and in 1764, the land’s growth-use was aptly agrarian. Over two hundred and fifty years later, Durnford’s growth vision for the garden lots of Pensacola lives on, but now as the East Garden District.