Posts

Shopping in Downtown Jacksonville in the 1950s and 1960s

My family, minus my father who died in California a couple months before, arrived in Jacksonville in the summer of 1954.  Mom bought a house -- first house she had lived in that wasn't rented since she left her family home in Pensacola, a new Navy bride, in 1937.  The house was on the southside, just around the corner from my grandma and aunt in the neighborhood known as Colonial Manor.  I was 7 years old. Jacksonville's downtown at the time was a collection of buildings from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.  Cohen Brothers, the toniest department store at the time, was in the St. James Building, an elaborate structure taking up one city block.  The building was one of the most magnificent in town after the Great Fire of 1901.  It opened in 1912, and was designed by Henry John Klutho, a young architect schooled in the designs of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, who had come to Jacksonville for the architectural opportunities created by that devastating fi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Facing History: Ax Handle Saturday

I was 13 years old, watching television on a hot August afternoon in our home on the south side of Jacksonville, Florida.  The station I was watching overrode the program with breaking news.  Violence had broken out downtown, racial violence that escalated rapidly.  There was a warning for everyone to stay away from downtown due to the violence.  Not much more was said. I briefly thought about going, to see what was going on, but my mother nixed that idea.  And, considering the nature of mob violence, that was probably wise.  But I learned all I could about it, which was difficult for a while, as news of the event was suppressed in Jacksonville.  The city administration of Mayor Haydon Burns, in those days, reflected his segregationist opinions.   Tidbits of information about the violence leaked out, passed by word of mouth, almost like a clandestine samizdat , facts passed around an underground network in the old totalitarian Soviet Union....
Post a Comment
Read more

HollyWHAT? When Jacksonville Filmed the Movies

 Before Hollywood, California, was a gleam in any film producer's eye, Jacksonville was the queen city of film.  Beginning in 1908, film companies from the north, mostly headquartered in New York, sought a better climate, literally, for making movies.  First to arrive was Kalem Studios in 1908, and by 1914, they had been joined by Fox, Metro, Edison, Gaumont, and others.  Jacksonville had many advantages for the filmmakers: it was a major railhead, connecting with nearly every major city in the United States at the time.  It had a variety of locations available, including wild lands, city streets, the St. Johns River, industrial areas, seaport facilities, and miles of beaches.  Labor there was not as expensive as in the north.  While winter in the north was plagued by grey days and awful weather, Jacksonville was sunny and perfect for filmmaking.   The many touring troupes that visited the city could be enticed into acting in films during the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Welcome

 I have just joined the Society for One-Place Studies.  The organization is based in Great Britain, but is a place for one-place studies of anywhere in the world.   My one-place study is of the city I grew up in.  I lived there from 1954 to 1980, when my husband wanted a more rural life, and we moved down into the next county south of Jacksonville. Jacksonville started as a village with the pragmatic name of Cowford (also seen as Cow Ford) on the banks of the St. Johns River.  The location was at a shallow part of the river that allowed for the passage of cattle from one side of the river to the other.  In 1822, people figured that Cowford was not the name that would grow the city into the metropolis it is today, so the city was formally founded as Jacksonville, named for Andrew Jackson.  These days, when old Andy has fallen into disfavor for some of his policies while President of the United States, the name of the city is not likely to be change...
2 comments
Read more