Matheson House, 528 Southeast First Avenue, Gainesville, Alachua County, FL

These drawings were donated to the H/H collection by the University of Florida's College of Architecture; the drawings were produced by architecture students at the University of Florida who chose to participate in the preservation option of the architecture curriculum.
Significance: The Matheson House is probably the second oldest house in Gainesville, Built about 1867. The two-story frame house was built for James Douglass Matheson, a prominent Gainesville merchant and civic office holder. He brought his bride, Augusta Steele, the only daughter of prominent Florida pioneer citizen, Judge Augustus Steele, to live in this house. The house was inherited by their son, Reverend Chris Matheson, D.D., a Gainesville mayor for eight terms and a Florida legislator in 1917-18. The house is occupied today by his widow, Sarah Hamilton Matheson. The Matheson House, according to tradition, was inspired by a similar house in the ancestral South Carolina town of the Mathesons.
Survey number: HABS FL-395
Building/structure dates: ca. 1867 Initial Construction