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    Jacksonville
    Jacksonville
    Jacksonville
    Ebook159 pages45 minutes

    Jacksonville

    By Ennis Armon Davis

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    About this ebook

    This book explores Jacksonville's transformation into the largest city (by land area) in the contiguous United States with images of significant events in its history. Like many of the country's older cities, Jacksonville suffered from the negative impacts of rapid urban sprawl after World War II. Amid a declining tax base, public schools losing their accreditation, and government corruption scandals, Jacksonville voters approved a referendum to consolidate the struggling city with Duval County to create the "Bold New City of the South." These changes, along with many others, have continued to guide this Southern metropolis into the 21st century.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateOct 12, 2015
    ISBN9781439653579
    Jacksonville
    Author

    Ennis Armon Davis

    Using postcards, photographs from personal collections, and images from various state and local sources, author Ennis Armon Davis takes readers on an iconic journey through the evolution of Jacksonville from a stagnant postwar community to a 21st-century metropolis. Davis is an urban planner who has been involved with the revitalization of Jacksonville's urban core since 2003. Davis, the cofounder of MetroJacksonville.com, also wrote Reclaiming Jacksonville and Cohens: The Big Store for History Press.

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      Book preview

      Jacksonville - Ennis Armon Davis

      Jacksonville.

      INTRODUCTION

      The first 50 years of the 20th century saw Jacksonville explode to life after the devastating Great Fire of 1901, rising from a small town of 28,429 to one of the South’s largest cities with a population of 204,275 by 1950. Enjoying an economic boost provided by World War II, the city’s population had increased 33.6 percent over the previous 10 years. Over 25 percent of its workforce was employed in the manufacturing, logistics, and wholesale industries; furthermore, NAS Jacksonville, Mayport, and Cecil Field had been commissioned, creating a housing boom throughout the county. The 1952 opening of the Mathews Bridge led to the rapid development of Arlington.

      At the center of Florida’s gateway city was its vibrant downtown. Here, millions would get their first glimpse of urban life in Florida by arriving at the Jacksonville Terminal, the largest passenger rail station south of Washington, DC. Stepping outside the terminal’s doors, visitors were exposed to an atmosphere filled with 24-hour life and activity, featuring four flag-ranked hotels. The heart of the city bustled with blocks filled with restaurants, theaters, bars, and flagship department stores. While downtown bustled, its congested streets and decaying wharfs resulted in a push for change. Mayor Haydon Burns’s Jacksonville Story resulted in a new look for the downtown waterfront by replacing decaying wharfs and piers with new skyscrapers, a new government complex, and riverfront parking. In addition, established in 1955, the Jacksonville Expressway Authority’s first wave of transportation projects would lay the foundation for establishment of the sprawling metropolis most recognize in the 21st century.

      By 1960, the city had already become known for its substantial freeway and expressway program, which preceded the enactment of the accelerated interstate highway program of 1956. Hoping to meet anticipated demand for downtown growth, plans were even proposed for a downtown loop consisting of a double central business district belt. This unique loop would include an elevated freeway with a surface expressway at the lower level. While this loop was never built, two additional loops eventually became reality: the Twentieth Street Expressway (MLK Parkway) and Interstate 295. Jacksonville’s road-building program was utilized as an urban-renewal program to remove vibrant African American neighborhoods such as the ritzy Sugar Hill and the working-class community of Campbell’s Addition, both of which had mysteriously been determined as blights.

      While Duval County’s population exploded to 455,411 by 1960, Jacksonville had become a troubled city. Defined by race riots, urban blight, corrupt politics, disaccredited public high schools, a declining manufacturing and tax base, and white flight, the city saw its population decline to 201,030. Determined to change the city’s fortunes, a meeting in the Robert Meyer Hotel’s Windsor Room on January 18, 1965, set the wheels in motion for a new beginning. Here, chamber of commerce president Claude Yates secured 22 signatures petitioning the legislature for the consolidation of city and county governments. Approved by voters in 1967, Jacksonville’s consolidation became official on October 1, 1968. Once a stagnant and troubled 30-square-mile urban city, consolidation had transformed Jacksonville into the nation’s largest city by land area. While the original city would continue to decline in population, those figures were forever hidden through consolidation. Instead of having an estimated population of 164,739, in the 1970 census, combined with its booming suburbs, Jacksonville’s official population had boomed to 528,865. It had become the Southeast’s second-largest city and the nation’s 23rd largest. The Isaiah Hart Bridge and new Jacksonville International Airport both opened the same year as consolidation. In 1969, the largest professionally planned road-construction program in the city’s history and a $126 million water/sewer improvement program were launched. A recent recipient of the All America City Award, Jacksonville had truly become the Bold City of the South.

      In the midst of celebrating its sesquicentennial, new towers with names of Gulf Life, Atlantic Bank, and Blue Cross Blue Shield would rise, signifying the city’s transition into a major financial and insurance center and helping the city live up to its Bold City of the South moniker. This scene culminated with the completion of the iconic Independent Life Building in 1975. As Florida’s tallest, stretching 535 feet into the sky, it instantly became a postcard image for Jacksonville’s progress and was anticipated to spur major growth. Growth would come, but not in the form of what many civic boosters had anticipated. Anchored by a new University of North Florida campus and booming shopping centers such as Regency Square, Gateway, Philips, Normandy, Roosevelt, and Orange Park Malls, Jacksonville’s suburban areas exploded with growth as Arlington had done with the opening of the Mathews Bridge two decades earlier. Suffering at their expense was downtown Jacksonville, which saw its historic passenger rail station and most of its major hotels close by the end of the decade. With its downtown department stores threatening to follow suit, city leaders went as far as proposing a makeshift downtown mall above city streets to provide its struggling retail scene with the conveniences its suburban counterparts enjoyed.

      The 1980s would become known as the Billion-Dollar Decade due to the amount of new development completed in downtown. This decade would be capped with the construction of the JTA Skyway people-mover system, the completion of the Prime Osborn Convention Center, and the Rouse Company’s opening of the Jacksonville Landing. However, while the Northbank skyline literally changed overnight with the completion of the AT&T Tower, Omni Hotel, and Enterprise Center, downtown’s department stores all closed, finally unable to compete with suburban shopping centers and a

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