Tag Archives: Brooke Shields

In the Heart of Riverside: JaxbyJax V and the Martha Washington

This Saturday, 10/13, JaxbyJax V, the fifth annual JaxbyJax Literary Arts Festival, takes place in 12 intimate venues around Park and King Streets in Riverside. See the event schedule and this year’s writers at www.jaxbyjax.com.

Click below for the full Martha Washington Hotel story:

So the folks hard at work deep in the bowels of the JaxPsychoGeo Detective Agency (!) thought this week’s post should concern that geographic center of Jacksonville’s Riverside Avondale, the largest historic district in Florida. 

Here, then, is an archived JaxPsychoGeo story from 2016 about the Martha Washington Hotel. Demolition had begun. Wayne Wood called the saving of the Martha Washington the most dramatic victory in Riverside Avondale Preservation’s history. The old building has lived many lives–those of Southern aristocrats, World War II servicemen, indigent elderly women, and 21st century hipsters. It has much more living to do.

From the JaxPsychoGeo Archives: LaRose’s Shoes

Click below for the full story:

Big stained glass piano in the middle of the store. Some said Joseph John LaRose designed half a million pairs of shoes. What they found inside, after he died: the appraiser from Sotheby’s called it King Tut’s tomb. Jackie Kennedy had come. And Betty Grable. And Joan Crawford. And Brooke Shields. Jayne Mansfield was wearing his shoes when she died. He chastised me. I wanted to tell him how wrong he was. He wanted me to do the same.