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Pacetti Hotel, with connections to Florida lighthouse history, on the National Register of Historic Places

The historic Ponce Inlet Florida’s Pacetti Hotel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 23, 2020 by the National Park Service.  The two story-hotel was an 1885 addition onto the family home of Bartola and Martha Jane Pacetti, long-time, local property owners on the north side of the inlet, who had sold ten acres of their land grant for four hundred dollars to the United States Bureau of Lighthouses in 1883.  Four years later, on November 1, 1887, the lantern room of the then Mosquito Inlet (now Ponce Inlet) Lighthouse’s 175-foot tower was first lit on that newly completed light station.  To fulfill this historic cycle, about a year ago the Pacetti property, then owned by the Greenacres Foundation of Ohio, was sold to the Ponce DeLeon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association, which maintains and preserves the lighthouse as an active aid to navigation, attraction, and museum.

The Pacetti Hotel, courtesy of the Ponce DeLeon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association

“It will be a tremendous honor to have the Pacetti Hotel placed on the National Register. Being listed will help our institution in some specific bureaucratic situations and should also allow for more grant opportunities in the future. Besides those benefits, having the Pacetti Hotel on the National Register brings it great prestige and establishes the significance of the site for future generations,” said Ponce Inlet Preservation Association Executive Director Ed Gunn.

What makes a property or site worthy of preservation?  According to the National Park Service guidelines, a property must meet at least one out of four criteria. Essentially, the property must be associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history.  It must be connected with the lives of significant persons in our past, or embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction.  Finally, the property must have yielded or may be likely to yield, information important in history or prehistory.

The Pacetti Hotel’s preservation, interpretation, and use will be consistent with the goals of the lighthouse organization and comes as a rich resource for state and national history.

For more information contact: Felipe De Paula (386) 761-1821

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