Tag Archives: Herschel Shepard

Because of Poor Planning, Parking Storage is Hollowing Out Downtown Jax

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Call them “parking craters” or “dead zones” or osteoporosis. Mammoth parking garages are eating Downtown alive. When the flâneuX sees only parking storage on either side, they guess Downtown is the “parking district.” Jane Jacobs titled a famous essay “Downtown is for People.” Jax authorities sometimes seem to think otherwise.

This is Where the First House Stood

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Here, Lewis Zachariah and Maria Hogans built the first house. It preceded the city (if you could call it that) of Jacksonville by six years. Oddly, the Spanish had built houses here before the “first house” was built. When hotels replaced it, the Old Hogans Well remained. The city burnt and rebuilt and burnt and rebuilt. Today, the concrete discus atop the city looks like a UFO landing pad.

New Story: Old St. Johns River Lighthouse

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When I climbed the lighthouse in the year 2000, we found, in place of the light, the nest of a great night bird of prey. The Old St. Johns Lighthouse should stand for hundreds of years, perhaps a thousand, says Herschel Shepard, the architect who restored it. The door’s long buried in the risen ground. Wanton S. Webb called it a “pretty romance,” the story of a retired maritime sergeant who locked his daughter in the lighthouse a century and a half ago.