To go along with a few recent threads, I figured I would be selfish and create a thread detailing the wholesale destruction of just one city: Jacksonville, FL.
Jacksonville is my hometown, and due to its horrible reputation nowadays, sometimes I find it difficult to even admit I am from the city for fear I will be labeled some conservative religious nutjob or a redneck. It's definitely a misunderstood city with absolutely fascinating and beautiful old neighborhoods and brewery districts and commercial strips, but its downtown has suffered a lethal blow. Arguably many sunbelt/southern cities were never that large pre-automobile, and if they were they were taken over by suburbs. Jacksonville's downtown is so dead and filled with vacant lots and surface parking that it is hard to imagine that it was one of the thriving industrial and vacation centers of this country for generations.
Given the immense presence of modern day First Baptist Church on 9 city blocks downtown, as well as a traditionally conservative voting record and notable incidents of racism and toil in modern day America, it is next to impossible to imagine that Jacksonville was once one of the liberal meccas of the country, akin to San Francisco.
It is difficult to imagine something that is literally the opposite of the town today.
Jacksonville had a fort and settlement (the French) before the Spanish came to St. Augustine 30 miles down the road in 1564. That makes it the oldest European settled city in America, even older than St. Augustine. Amazing right?
The city's modern forefathers from the 1880s through the 1920s were permanent residents William Astor, Alfred duPont, Henry Flagler and so many other gilded family names. The Vanderbilt family was active in Jacksonville, as were many of the biggest names in Newport and Pennsylvania/Ohio.
Jacksonville had the Harlem of the South in Lavilla, which had between 10,000 and 15,000 ppsm as one point. Ray Charles and James Weldon Johnson came from LaVilla, and Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday performed in Lavilla many many times each year.
Jacksonville had the largest and busiest train station south of the Mason Dixon. The current structure was ironically saved in all this mess, and was constructed in 1917, serving 20,000 passengers a day for decades. It was a permitted knock off of Penn Station and was designed by a NYC architect and built by a Philly contractor. Today it is one of the smallest and most insufficient convention centers in the country and is surrounded by blocks of vacant lots.
Jacksonville had a mob family, tied to the larger families in Tampa and New Orleans. It also competed with Tampa as the hub of world cigar rolling, and finally by WWI stole all of Tampa's cigar businesses. Today Swisher's big old factory and warehouse still stands as its headquarters and is the largest cigar plant in the world.
Maxwell Coffee operates one of the last remaing waterfront factories, where it has processed beans for many many decades. It is less than half a mile from the Swisher plant.
Those are literally 2 of the last remaining bastions of big-industry in Jacksonville. Everything else was bulldozed for nothing. No more smokestacks, no more warehouses ready to be turned into lofts. What was once a city that resembled a cross of San Francisco meets New Orleans meets Mid-Atlantic is now a dead crumbling mess. Fortunately there is still a turn of the century beach that resembles Provincetown/Cape Cod called Atlantic Beach, but that isn't near downtown.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves>>>>>>>>
The following photos are taken from:
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/art...d-haydon-burns
All photos from here on courtesy of State of Florida Archives and editing done by MetroJacksonville.
Precursor of the horrors to come in this thread, yellow represents wholesale destruction.
And here actually the yellow should extend all the way to edges of the photo:
Here is another recent excellent article done by the folks at MetroJacksonville:
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/art...onville/page/1
The following photos are taken from this article written by Ennis Davis at MetroJacksonville (also a poster on this site):
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/art...g-railroad-row
RAILROAD ROW - LAVILLA
Today:
Now the following are taken from this article:
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/art...rines-and-port
I love this article. Jacksonville is still a major port city, all activity concentrated further north on the river. However, it was a BUSTLING port and center of shipbuilding for decades - right around downtown. The waterfront for miles was packed with warehouses, wharves, piers, businesses, and hotels and brothels for sailors. The scene could have rivaled San Francisco, Seattle, Baltimore, even Boston. It was part of the city's identity, and made it unique in the south. At some point in the 40s and 50s some idiots in City Hall decided that the waterfront was dirty and needed to be filled in and eliminated for surface parking. Ew, Jacksonville's past 60 years of thinking at its finest. Now there is not much of a downtown or an identity for the city, when now the waterfront could be a MAJOR tourist destination filled with shops and hotels and aquariums and restaurants.
Before:
The railroad bridge from the 1800s is still there, but the bridge next to it was destroyed for a boring 6-lane concrete thing.
Now the turn for the worst - the heart of the city being ripped up:
All the buildings in the background to the right have been destroyed; every one! The waterfront was destroyed for buildings like below. A crime.
Now here is a step by step process of how the city destroyed itself, taken from the following article called The Great Skyscraper Extortion:
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/art...scheme-of-1911
The Heard Bank, seen here all 17 floors, was built in 1911. Yes Jacksonville had 10 story buildings as soon as rebuilding commenced after the 1901 Great Fire (3rd in scope in the country I believe, seen as far north as Raleigh, NC). Well lo and behold the following process was replicated often on a much more devastatingly large scale hundreds of more times in this period.
Heard Bank seen in skyline view from the 20s or 30s:
Demolished for surface parking in the 80s, with part of facade kept as "entrance" (and surface parking is more of a use believe it or not than many demolitions actually got afterward):
And now all that remains are a few columns in front of the PAC:
AND JUST TO REMIND YOU, HERE IS WHAT THE PAC LOOKS LIKE AS IT WAS CONSTRUCTED TO REPLACE THE "UGLY BLIGHTED" WATERFRONT IN THE 60s:
And now for another TRAGEDY:
The destruction of LaVilla, the Harlem of the South. The history of LaVilla is so unique and so fascinating and it wasn't just a place for blacks. So many famous people have experienced LaVilla and stayed in its hotels, including presidents. It was a whole area that would be reminiescent of some of the coolest areas of New Orleans today (thinking French Quarter). Even some of the architecture (not seen in the following photos, but occasionally remaining spottedly here and there) appears like 1800s Gulf Coast architecture, with those wrought iron balconies. LaVilla was mainly destroyed in the 90s, long after most cities stopped demolishing structures.
Before:
Today:
Our beautiful new $350M courthouse - spanning 7 city blocks of pure destruction. We had designs submitted by Canon, Spindela, and all sorts of prominent firms for great designs, all less than $350M, and our IDIOT mayor scrapped them and did some shit design-build crap than came in wayyy overbudget, way too large and resulted in unnecessary destruction. Some buildings were destroyed, and yet the courthouse did not even occupy their sites.
A school! WTF
What once was a bustling area of 2-5 floor buildings spanning dozens of blocks in all directions: