Tag Archives: Great Fire of 1901

The Myth of Ancient Floridian Giants

Posted on June 25, 2022 | Leave a comment

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

The fiction that the Timucua and other indigenous Florida peoples were seven to nine feet tall spread rapidly in the 1950s. My mother believed it, told me we were descended. Another fiction. Willie Browne and Father Dearing believed it. D.B. McKay — Tampa mayor, newspaper editor, and chief organizer of the White Municipal Party — believed nine foot tall ancient Floridians populated the Garden of Eden. So where did these ideas come from?

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Tagged A Land Remembered, Athore, Cross and Sword, Cross and Sword: A Symphonic Drama of the Spanish Settlement of Florida, D.B. McKay, Father Frank Dearing, Fiction Fix, First Presbyterian Church Jacksonville, Fort Caroline, Fort Caroline National Memorial, Garden of Eden Florida, Great Fire of 1901, In Abraham's Bosom, Jacque Le Moyne, jaxpsychogeo, Jean Ribault, Juan Alonso Cavale, Mocama, Mocama Indians, Oriba, Patrick D. Smith, Patrick D. Smith A Land Remembered, Paul Green, Purple Petunia, René Goulaine de Laudonnière, Saturiwa, Theodor de Bry, Tim Gilmore, Timucua, Timucuan Indians, Timucuan Village U.S. Capitol, Wesley B. Plott, White Municipal Party, William Sears, William Sears archaeologist, Willie Browne

The Armory

Posted on January 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

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Truly this story has it all. The old Armory has stories enough for a hundred cities. There’s no way to tease it adequately. Urban exploration. Thousands of concerts, from opera to Janis Joplin and the Allman Brothers. Political debates and politicians’ funerals and boxing bouts. Stories of integration (James Weldon Johnson, Duke Ellington, Marian Anderson) defiant against Jim Crow. And a call for a future.

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Tagged Abe Livert’s Records, Allman Brothers Band, Along This Way, Angie Rodeillat Smith, Armory Jacksonville, Bryant Bowles, Charley Johns, Clarence Darrow, Colonel Edward Henry, Confederate Ball, Dave Franklin Duke Ellington, Dennis Riggs, Doyle Carlton, Duncan Fletcher, Duncan U. Fletcher, Duval County Armory, Edge City, First Baptist Church Jacksonville, Florida Civil Rights, Florida history, Florida National Guard, Florida Times-Union, Floripatra, Garage Boutique, Gator Bowl, Great Fire of 1901, Haydon Burns, Hixon’s Surfboard Revolution, Hoyt’s High Fidelity, J.C. Coppedge, Jacksonville Armory, Jacksonville Coliseum, Jacksonville history, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, James Weldon Johnson, Janis Joplin Jacksonville, jax psycho geo, John T. Alsop, Johnny Brewer, Johns Committee, KKK Jacksonville, Ku Klux Klan Jacksonville, Leo Kitchen Orchestra, Marian Anderson, Marian Anderson Jacksonville, Marvin Strickland, McCoys Creek, NAAWP, Nake Pear, National Association for the Advancement of White People, Paulus Music, Pickaninny Chorus, Prohibition Jacksonville, Riggs Promotion, Roosevelt Mall, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Song of Hiawatha, Senator Duncan Fletcher, Sidney Catts, Sidney Drachin, Tim Gilmore, Tim Gilmore Jax Psycho Geo, Tommy Torino, United Confederate Veterans, W.A. Hobbs, W.F. Bunch, Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, Ye Mystic Revelers

The Independent Life Building / Wells Fargo Center

Posted on May 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

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From lightning strikes to the locomotive buried in its foundation, from loyalty to President Nixon to overtures to the National Football League, from the architectural sketches of Wah Yo Eng to the immigrant family of Bulgarians, Haitians and Jamaicans, the Independent Life Building (now the Wells Fargo Center) has reflected Jacksonville back to itself since 1974.

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Tagged Accustaff, Accustaff Building, Bay Street, Beth Dunlop, Bill Ectric, Bill Ectric King, Bill Foley, Bill Kinh, Bob Irsay, Bud Adams, C.J. Holmes, Colt Fever, Consolidation, David Eisenhower, Doug Eng, Drew Company, Florida Central and Peninsular Railroad, Florida Gothic, Great Fire of 1901, H. and W.B. Drew, Henry Flagler, Independent Life Building, Independent Life Insurance Company, J.H.W. Hawkins, J.M.W. Hawkins, Jacksonville Bulls, Jacksonville Businessmen’s Club, Jacksonville Colts, Jacksonville Oilers, Jacob Bryant III, jaxpsychogeo, JMW Hawkins, John C. Christian, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, KBJ, KBJ Architects, Kemp Bunch Jackson, Lyubomira Lazarova, Mayport, Mayport Naval Station, Mayport Navy Base, McConihe Building, Modis, Modis Building, Richard Nixon, River Club, Southern Gothic, Tim Gilmore, United States Football League, USFL, Veliko Tarnovo, Way Yo Eng, Wayne Wood, Wells Fargo Center

The Adams Building: from the Vice Wars to “Rehumanizing the Broken Man”

Posted on January 18, 2020 | Leave a comment

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The old upstairs hotel has never, in 125 years, closed its doors. Now dedicated to “deinstitutionalizing the human being and rehumanizing the broken man,” the hotel was built in the bloody years of LaVilla’s vice wars. It sheltered refugees from the Great Fire of 1901. Half a century later, it served as a brothel with “peep holes” in the walls.

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Tagged Adams Building, Adams Building Hotel, Bettelini's, Bettelini's Hotel, Blue Bird Bar and Grill, Ed Austin, Florida history, Fox Jewelry and Loan, Great Fire of 1901, Hamilton Jay, Hank Smith, Hotel Moncrief, J.E.T. Bowden, James Inn, jax psycho geo, LaVilla, Lesnick, Pete Lesnick, Pete's Jewelry and Loan, Prospect House, Richard Lesnick, Richard Martin, River City Renaissance, Robert Starrett, Sam Houston, Sam Russ, St. James Recovery Center, T.J. Underhill, The Store, Tim Gilmore

New Story: The Lions of Drew and McConihe

Posted on November 30, 2019 | 1 comment

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The lions looked out on Bay Street, facing north, four stories high, for 70 years. Irony brought them down: the life insurance company cut short their reign. Now they stand beneath the glass giant that for years so awkwardly dwarfed the city and await our pilgrimage.

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Tagged Drew Building, Florida history, Great Fire of 1901, H. and W.B. Drew, Independent Life Building, Independent Life Insurance Company, J.H.W. Hawkins, Jacob Bryant III, jax psycho geo, Louise Sullivan, Luther McConihe, Main Street Bridge, McConihe Building, Tim Gilmore, W. Stokes Boyd

The Life and Multiple Deaths of the Drew Building

Posted on November 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

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The story of the building at 45 West Bay Street concerns a bear, Jacksonville’s first bookstore, Ottis Toole, the tragic deaths of construction workers, multiple demolition plans, the ghost of a third floor and the love of an architect who refused to let this building die. Now Urban Grind Coffee, Folio Weekly and other businesses call the Drew Building home. Click below for the story.

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Tagged Claire Goforth, Clements Rumpel, Columbus Drew, Deluxe Cleaners, Don Ingram, Doug Hutchins, Downtown Development Authority, Drew Building, Drew's Bookstore, F. Kyle Marshall, Fletcher Morgan, Florida Alligator Farm, Florida history, Florida Whig Party, Folio Weekly, George Sonnenberg, Great Fire of 1901, H. and W.B. Drew, H.J. Klutho, Henry John Klutho, Hodson Drew, Horace Drew, Independent Life Building, Jacksonville history, James Clements, Jaquelin Daniel, Julie Delegal, Lenny Curry, Loading Dock Restaurant, Lyman Fletcher, Madeleine Peck Wagner, McConihe Building, Morgan's Department Store, Osky’s Alligator Store, Ostrich Farm, Otis Perkins, Ottis Toole, Peter Rumpel, Pine Street Fire of 1891, Regina Hersey, Richard Martin, Robert Broward, Robert LeMoine, Rocco Morabito, Shelton Hull, Sohrab Fracis, Stalking Ottis Toole, The Architecture of Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville, The City Makers, Tim Gilmore, Urban Grind Coffee, W.B. Camp, Wilbur Bacon Camp, William L'Engle

Where the Jacksonville Woman’s Club Stood

Posted on October 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

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It’s not a “demolition,” they say. It’s a “salvage.” Either way, the Jacksonville Woman’s Club building is gone. Causes seen as primarily “women’s” have encountered the same contradictory status of being both exalted and discounted that women themselves have historically experienced. The “Woman’s Club

Movement” owns an important place in the history of feminism, leading even to #metoo. The headline declaimed, “Quadruple Amputee to Get Degree and Bride this Week.” Mellen Greeley, the architect who built the Woman’s Club building, “said the secret to living a long life was being a peaceful person.” My daugthers will always identify by their own names. They’ll never be Mrs. Somebody-Else.

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Tagged 1816 Avondale Circle, 1901-1919: A New South City, Abigail Adams, Ada Cummer, Arthur Cummer, Benvenuto, Clara White Mission, Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Dorothy Mortensen, Eartha White, George Hallam, Great Fire of 1901, Grover Cleveland, Hope McMath, J.C. Greeley, Jacksonville after the Fire, Jacksonville Junior College, Jacksonville Woman's Club, James Crooks, Jim Crooks, Jim Draper, Jimmy Wilson, John Adams, Jonathan C. Greeley, Jonathan Greeley, Kent Campus, Ladies' Friday Musicale, Lori Ann Whittington, Mellen C. Greeley, Mellen Clark Greeley, Mellen Greeley, Ninah Cummer, quadruple amputee, Riverside Avondale Preservation, Riverside Remembered, Robert Meyer Hotel, Sub-Tropical Exposition, Thomas Jefferson, Tudor Revival, Tudor Room, Waldo Cummer, Wayne Wood, Wellington Cummer, wister

Two Christmas Stories

Posted on December 24, 2017 | Leave a comment

Read one JaxPsychoGeo Christmas story, and get the other free.

Click below for the story of the James E. Merrill House.

And is the toy gun that lies on the child’s bed really Arthur’s? Was it too a Christmas present? And is it really Arthur’s bed? Did Arthur lie here looking through the window onto the sleeping-porch on the second-story back of the house in his last year, his eighth year, 1906?

And / Or … Click below… “Oh ho ho / Who wouldn’t go? / Up on the housetop, click, click, click, / Down through the chimney” to old St. Nick’s Lounge on Atlantic Boulevard?

“May we invite you to enjoy our hospitality?”

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Tagged Curry Thomas Hardware, East Jacksonville, Fairfield, Ginger Greene, Great Fire of 1901, Helen Merrill, Jacksonville, Jacksonville Historical Society, James Campbell Merrill, James E. Merrill, James Eugene Merrill, jaxpsychogeo, Merrill House, Merrill-Stevens, Mudville Grille, Richard Bowers, Saint Nicholas, St. Nicholas Lounge and Package Store, St. Nick's Lounge, Tim Gilmore, W.B. Dawson

Sister Mary Ann at the Church of the Immaculate Conception

Posted on July 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

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Sister Mary Ann braved the jails, whispered with the condemned. She nurtured soldiers shot, stabbed, battered and dismembered in Civil War Jacksonville. She raised the funds to open the orphanage, and St. Mary’s Home opened on August 15^th, the Feast of Assumption, 1886.

Daily, she’d made her rounds among those dying of Yellow Fever, their yellow eyes and the vomiting of blood, the seizures that mocked demonic possession.

By the time she died in January 1914, “Jacksonville’s Angel of Mercy” had selflessly served the sick, the dying, the condemned, the homeless, the lost, and the orphaned in Jacksonville for 50 years.

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Tagged Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Civil War Jacksonville, Eartha White, Ellen Hoare, Father William John Hamilton, Great Fire of 1901, Jacksonville, Jacksonville's Angel of Mercy, jaxpsychogeo, pieta, Sister Mary Ann, Tim Gilmore, Yellow Fever

New Stories: Barnett Mansion and Springfield Tunnels

Posted on December 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

Two stories. Scroll down for both.

Click below for the full story about Barnett Mansion:

“There are so many stories in this house,” he says.

In the 1970s, the police saw William Barnett, 1824-1903, standing in the shadows and drew their guns.

Click below for the full story about Springfield Tunnels:

Billy says he and his friends slipped through an aperture into a system of extensive tunnels beneath the Barnett Mansion in Springfield.

The great strength of conspiracy theories and urban legends is that you can’t prove a negative.

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Tagged "The O'Possum Hunt", Barnett Bank, Barnett Mansion, Bion Barnett, C. Adrian Pillars, Charles Adrian Pillars, Great Fire of 1901, Hogans Creek, Jacksonville, Jim Krahn, Joel McEachin, Ottis Toole, Solomon Lodge, Springfield, Stalking Ottis Toole, The Mad Atlas of Virginia King, Tim Gilmore, Virginia King, William Barnett

Tag Archives: Great Fire of 1901

The Myth of Ancient Floridian Giants

The Armory

The Independent Life Building / Wells Fargo Center

The Adams Building: from the Vice Wars to “Rehumanizing the Broken Man”

New Story: The Lions of Drew and McConihe

The Life and Multiple Deaths of the Drew Building

Where the Jacksonville Woman’s Club Stood

Two Christmas Stories

Sister Mary Ann at the Church of the Immaculate Conception

New Stories: Barnett Mansion and Springfield Tunnels

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