Jacksonville: The City Florida Forgot

[plinko]

Fascinating. This is a city I've only driven through and never stopped in.

For people in other parts of the state, Jacksonville seems to have a reputation is the state's Detroit (as in, 'why would you ever go there'?) similar to what I found when I lived in Michigan. And of course, like Detroit, it looks like there's alot more than what can be found in popular imagination. Then again, that's the case for many places.

What's the story with the taller older looking building here?

[Lakelander]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

That's fascinating about the midwestern and northeastern influence. There's some unexpectedly high quality structures down there.


http://photos.metrojacksonville.com

This is totally strange. Apartment buildings straight out of Kansas City with a palm tree in front.

These tend to be scattered throughout Riverside/Avondale, Springfield, New Springfield and Brentwood. All were neighborhoods on either end of downtown that rapidly expanded after the Great Fire of 1901. Here are a few more:









Here's a link to a photo gallery where I have about 8 pages worth of images from various apartment buildings in Riverside/Avondale:

http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/...0966&k=dSrWqQg

[Lakelander]

Originally Posted by MplsTodd

Great tour! I really liked the older commercial buildings and apartments. I was intrigued by the buildings in Photo 29. The tall building on the left appears to be empty. Is it undergoing a renovation? Is there much adaptive reuse to apts happening?

That's the Florida Life Building (on the left). It's a Prairie School office building by HJ Klutho that was built in 1911. Along with the Bisbee (on the right) and the Atlantic National Bank on the next block, they are the oldest highrises in Florida. It's been vacant since one of the local banks merged into one of the North Carolina banks in the early 1990s. It was purchased two weeks ago for $3 million, along with the two buildings in this image and the 18 story Barnett Bank building (builtin 1926) across the street. The last time I spoke with the developer, he planned to convert these three into a boutique hotel with the smaller building being an upscale restaurant and bar. Before then, he had unsuccessfully envisioned them becoming an apartment tower. Below, is the previously proposed apartment tower rendering:

[Lakelander]

Originally Posted by Prahaboheme

Lakelander, thanks for representing Jacksonville as it should be! I'd love to see what you can do for St. Augustine -- I know you would showcase the lesser seen sides of that city as well.

Yes, St. Augustine has some interesting areas that most tourist don't visit. I need to get back down to St. Augustine. Even though it's a 30 minute drive south, it's been a few years since I taken pictures of it.

Is JAX doing anything to restore the Confederate Park and canal? I feel like there is huge potential there to recapture some former glory, and it attract some decent private investment along the canal.

Originally, when the riverfront was industrial, that was Jacksonville's premier urban park. It formed the border between downtown and Springfield. Hogans Creek was also the marshy waterway that stopped the 1901 fire from extending into Springfield, which was pretty undeveloped at the time. Progress on restoring this area has been slow because the creek is one of Florida's most contaminated waterways from industry that used to line it.



Anyway, there's $1 million set aside to put a mile long shared use path back in it. However, it appears to be on hold until a suit between the city and an adjacent owner can is resolved. This situation is pretty interesting because the city had a 19th century coal gasification plant that contaminated the area but they want someone who purchased the property within the last two decades to partially pay for the cleanup.

Until that happens, it remains a pretty cool and underutilized waterway for kayaking.

[Lakelander]

Originally Posted by plinko

What's the story with the taller older looking building here?

That's the Park Lane apartments. Built in 1926, the 16-story building has the first residential highrise in Florida. The developer decided to build it after a trip to NYC.

[pdxtex]

first of all, great tour. jacksonville is probably off the radar for alot of people, maybe its better off that way. second, man, id totally live there. it looks like its got a cool dirty south vibe with the right amount of grit but still lively and fun. dunno, thats probably a shitty way to describe it but it looks cool!

[Thundertubs]

Great thread. Jacksonville definitely has a Midwestern look about it.

Sad to see those two prewar buildings downtown still empty. It looked like they were being worked on when I was there in 2005.

[Lakelander]

They were being renovated into office space around 2005. However, the developer (at the time) went bankrupt when the market went down the tubes, leaving them in their current state.

[village person]

GREAT compilation, Lakelander! I hope it's okay for me to revive a thread this old. I'm de-lurking and was so happy to see a thread capture Jacksonville this well with photos from all of its many corners. It makes me extremely homesick.

Luckily, I am planning to move back to Jacksonville some time next year, and I'm also going to spend a big chunk of my summer down there beginning in 2 weeks. I really like the progress J'ville's making on many fronts and the potential it still has, and I think I've decided I'd rather be a part of its renaissance than live somewhere that is 'better off' in a matter of speaking. I feel like my field of interests (historic preservation and community development) can really be applied there, and I'd also like to fight the trend of J'ville hemorrhaging its talented and creative youth.

BTW, I've taken a recent interest in Eastside and Phoenix, but I'm not great at recognizing them, as I'm not half as familiar with that part of J'ville as other areas. I was wondering if any of your photos in this thread are from those two neighborhoods?

Originally Posted by Centropolis

This is totally strange. Apartment buildings straight out of Kansas City with a palm tree in front.

Exactly! That Springfield trio Lakelander posted is straight out of Kansas City and in fact looks eerily like a trio of walk-ups I happen to live in here. In KC, this type of 3-story walkup typically has stylish front porches and they're called colonnade apartments or colonnades. That particular design is said to have been invented in KC and there are hundreds of them here. However, there are also many walk-ups here like the Springfield trio and the one I live in, which have no front porches. I'm not really sure these have a name or can be called 'colonnades' without the columns, but I tend to call them "porchless colonnades," because they're otherwise laid out exactly the same. They're typically 3 stories with central halls, front and back stairwells and identical units, mirror imaged through the hall axis. I think most are 6-plexes, but there are some variations, like 12-plexes (4 units per floor), or 4-story 8-plexes.

I've created an inventory of all the pre-1950s multifamily housing (with 3+ units) in Jacksonville, and the others that I've found that look like KC's typical walk-ups are 115 2nd St W here (Lakelander also posted this one above) and a couple on the 2600 block of College St in Riverside, here. I think it would be cool if I ended up living in one of these, to recreate my KC experience down there.

Jacksonville has a healthy collection of historic apartment buildings, but before about the 1940s, they seemed to come in a large variety of layouts, almost like it hadn't yet established a 'clone' type as KC did. The '40s saw more uniform 2-story quads, with their long side facing the street (though some were square). But I think the variety of historic architecture is what gives Jacksonville charm that makes up for quantity, being a city that was relatively small pre-WWII.

Originally Posted by ColDayMan

Easily my favorite Jacksonville tour since JFD was on here. Thanks!

I'm remembered!! But personally, this one's my favorite. I never it made it much beyond downtown with my photo threads. Again, great collection here, Lake!

[Ex-Ithacan]

Lots to like about Jax. I as stationed at Mayport (Jax Beach) back in the early 70s. We rarely went downtown for fun, seemed kind of seedy (and we were sailors ). We tended to think of the area as southern Georgia, even back then.
I passed through some years back, and it was good to see the place is doing fairly well. I love port cities, and Jacksonville fits the bill. Thanks for the tour Ll.

[rockyi]

Hard to believe that ANY city in Florida can lose population. Love the stock of early 20th century buildings.

[gatt]

very nice.

[Nightsky]

Nice pics, Jacksonville looks nice but is really in the shadow of Miami!

"As of 2010, the population had declined to 104,047."
What did you mean by that? According to Wikipedia and some other sources the population is 821 000 and 1.6 million in the metro, so the city population is higher then Miami.

[jd3189]

^^^ That is Jacksonville's current population after the city-county consolidation.

This is a great thread. Shows Jacksonville in a whole new way. Hope it continues to grow in the future.

[bobdreamz]

This thread is over 4 & half years old.
We need a JAX update !

[maru2501]

these are cool