Major Jacksonville Photo Thread...RAM, JIA, Panoramas, Food, and More! (St. Augustine: condos, house)

[jsimms3]

Jacksonville has a nickname: Hartford of the South

It is definitely still a worthy insurance hub, but not nearly like the good old days where several large companies had their HQ’s here. Today, BCBS, Aetna, Humana, AHL, Prudential, and Allstate still have their names on buildings, mainly downtown. Chicago Title was acquired by Fidelity National Financial, which is also headquartered here.

Here is BCBS’ downtown/Riverside tower. Their big campus is on the Southside of town and I show it in another previous thread.

[jsimms3]

Time for some Urban Grit!! I know you guys like this, so here goes



Sexy new highway overpass




Annie Lytle Public School Number 4
Recently purchased by a S FL investor who sits on properties and lets them fall down. The previous owners did the same. The school was built in 1917, and was the 4th school built as part of a $1,000,000 bond issue in 1915. It originally overlooked Riverside Park, but a nearly $200 million interchange linking 95 and 10 was built directly overhead and completed this year. The fate of the building does not look good.






Reminiscent of New Orleans


Notice the “Camel Rider”. This is a staple of Jacksonville. There are tons and tons of Arabs here and you won’t find another city in the South with as many delis run by Arabs serving up various “Rider” sandwiches. This building is no longer a sandwich shop run by Arabs, though.

[jsimms3]

[jsimms3]

New Construction: The 12 floor Wolfson's Adult Hospital Tower

[jsimms3]

Alfred I. duPont Trust Headquarters

Other bigshots with their names attached to Jacksonville from 1885-1930 include: -Andrew Carnegie who wintered nearby (my fireplace comes from his Cumberland Island home)
-J. Pierpont Morgan who personally financed the development of several Jacksonville neighborhoods
-the Vanderbilts who nearly built a very large resort in Jacksonville where Alfred duPont built his large Mediterranean estate instead
-William Astor who started the Florida Yacht Club and was a local philanthropist
-Henry Flagler of Standard Oil fame, partner of J. Rockefeller, built a rail and tourism empire here in Jacksonville and St. Augustine before moving further south in the 1920s.

The list goes on…

[jsimms3]

Northbank Riverwalk and Tillie Fowler Memorial

The memorial was designed by Mid-Ocean Studio ( http://www.midoceanstudio.com/the_studio/studio_profile.htm - broken link) out of Providence, RI/New York City. The architect is actually an Atlanta native. Tillie Fowler was a local long term Congresswoman and actually attended my church. She passed in 2005 I think.

[jsimms3]

[jsimms3]

The Jacksonville Terminal

Built in 1917. The terminal was modelled precisely and almost exactly after Penn Station. The architect was Ken Murchison out of New York and the contractor was Irwin & Leighton out of Philadelphia. At its busiest, 142 trains bringing 20,000 passengers came through every day. Now the terminal is a convention center, but is soon to be our multi-modal transportation hub, servicing Amtrak, future HSR, commuter rail, the skyway, JTA busses, JTA offices, Greyhound, and potentially streetcars or light rail.





The remains of the 1896 station.

[jsimms3]

More Grit!!!

[jsimms3]

Random Posterior Section of Downtown (LaVilla, Emerald Necklace Area, Eastside Area)

New Duval County Courthouse (original and beautifully done Canon Design plan was scrapped because it was found to be overbudget, instead this building is now being built almost a decade later and even costlier, yet it is butt ugly).


1912 Black Masonic Temple (ew, creepy to me, but at least Jax was progressive enough in the day to have blacks enter Freemasonry…and this neighborhood which is now razed was known as the Harlem of the South, in a good way back then, of course)


1917 Old Stanton High School


Detail


Metropolitan Lofts on the left…I saw a group of young profesh types hanging outside the front doors as I drove by




Original 1932 Post Office, now to be part of new courthouse


1902 home, now KBJ architects’ ( http://www.kbj.com/ - broken link) office.


One of a few old Federal Reserve buildings in Jax