Tag Archives: Joel McEachin

Brewster Hospital in Jim Crow Jax

Posted on July 20, 2021 | 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 year the old house was built is carved into its porch posts: 1885. It birthed the only hospital for black patients in Jim Crow Jax. Nursing student Lakeshia Sutton stayed with her aunt and uncle in the old building when it was a boarding house and she was a little girl. She feels nursing was a calling, but hadn’t known the “mansion” her aunt called home was “Old Brewster Hospital.”

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Tagged Ann Boylan DeGroot, B&W Rooming House, B.J. Sessions, Bettye J. Sessions, Bonnie Sparrow, Boylan Industrial Home and School, Boylan-Haven, Brewster Alumni and Community Nurses Association, Brewster Hospital, Brewster Hospital and Nurse Training School, Carpenter Gothic, Christian Peters, Diane Melendez, Duval County Hospital and Asylum, Ed Austin, Emmet Walker, George Brewster, Glorious Johnson, Harriet Emerson, jax psycho geo, Jesse Paulhill, Joel McEachin, Lakeshia Sutton, LaVilla, Lenape Tavern, Matilda Brewster, Methodist Hospital Jacksonville, North Florida Land Trust, nurses' annex, Old Brewster, Rayford Brown, Reggie Fullwood, Ritza Peters, River City Renaissance, Ruth Esther Meeker, Scatmo Reaves, Tim Gilmore, UF Health Jacksonville Priscilla Brown, Women’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Wynn Hotel

Against All Odds: The Survival of Edward Waters College

Posted on March 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

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It’s the oldest educational institution in Jacksonville. I wander Edward Waters College with Professor David Jamison. He points to buildings long ago destroyed by fire and we discuss R.L. Brown, Jacksonville’s first black architect. Against unbelievably great odds, what’s now the oldest historically black college in Florida survived.

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Tagged A.M.E. Bishop John Brown, A.M.E. Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, B.F. Lee Building, Benjamin F. Lee Theological Seminary Building, Brown Theological Institute, Brown University Edward Waters, Centennial Hall, Charles P. Long, Charles Pearce, College Gardens, Collegiate Gothic, David Jamison, East Florida Conference Divinity High School, Edward Waters, Edward Waters College, EWC, Fairfield School, Florida Governor Harrison Reed, Florida Normal and Divinity High School, Florida Normal School, Harrison Reed, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Howell and Stokes, Hurst Hall Edward Waters College, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, jax psycho geo, Jo Carlisle, Joel McEachin, John Hurst, John Mead Howell, Lackawanna Elementary School, Lee Seminary, Lee Theological Building, Marsh and Saxelbye, Mid-Westside, Milne Auditorium, Moses B. Salter, Mount Olive A.M.E. Church, Mount Zion A.M.E. Church, Nat Glover, R. O. Sidney, R.L. Brown, Richard Lewis Brown, Salter Hall Edward Waters College, Tim Gilmore, William P. Ross, Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society, Zachary Faison

Walking the Vanished Old Panama Road

Posted on April 12, 2020 | Leave a comment

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The Old Panama Road disappeared beneath the Northside of the city 120 years ago. This story tracks it. It heads north from the murder of Marie Gato, past Club Steppin’ Out, through the diary of a black Civil War soldier reading Lord Byron, a Spanish American War camp teeming with Typhoid Fever and the burning of a sawmill the size of a small town.

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Tagged Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, Andrew Robinson Elementary School, Austin Mann, Austin S. Mann, Bloxham Avenue, Buffalo Avenue, Buffalo Food Store, Camp Bloxham, Charles F. Sibbald, Childe Harold, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Club Steppin' Out, Confederacy, Confederate States of America, Covid-19, Cyrus Brown, E.L. Smith Candy, Eddie Pitzer, Edward Pitzer, El Modelo, Everett Hotel, Evergreen Cemetery, Fairfield, First Coast Automotive, G.W. Wetmore, Gabriel Hidalgo Gato, George W. Clark, Henry John Klutho, Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission, Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage, James Berry, jax psycho geo, Jim Crow, Joel McEachin, John Bigger, José Alejandro Huau, Jose Marti, Lord Byron, Lycurgis Bigger, manatee, Marie Louise Gato, North Springfield, Old Panama Road, Panama Florida, Panama Mills, Panama Park, Panama Park School, Panama Park Track, Pitzer and Bigger, Relaxx Inn, Sanborn Fire Insurance, Sebald Lane, Silver Street, Spanish moss, Springfield, Tim Gilmore, Trout River, Typhoid Fever, United States Colored Troops, USCT, We’re for Jesus House of Prayer, William Dunnington Bloxham

New Story: Chaseville “Colored Settlement” / Fort Caroline Club Estates

Posted on February 14, 2020 | Leave a comment

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Little remains of the old “Chaseville Colored Settlement,” where the 1920 census placed America’s first black presidential candidate. Fortunately for his bones, George Edwin Taylor was buried elsewhere, because developers dug up the skeletons of the old black cemetery. Where former slaves of the region’s most prominent plantation families once came to live their lives free, real estate developers built “midcentury modern” Arlington. Poultry farms gave way to Geodesica. Click below for the full story.

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Tagged Albert Sammis, Bruce Mouser, Brutus and Cain Bolton, Cary Wintz, Charles McNeill, Chaseville, Chaseville Colored Settlement, Clarence B. Moore, Daniel Dustin Hanson, Eartha White, Edidin Drive, Elizabeth Coffee, Fort Carolina Club Estates, Fort Caroline Elementary School, Fort Caroline Road, Geodesica, George Edwin Taylor, Gilbert Spindel, Hansontown, Heidi Road, Horseshoe Landing, Jacksonville Florida, Joel McEachin, John C. Christian, Kaden Drive, Kingsley Plantation, LaVilla, Lonnie Wurn, Marian Tillinghast Taylor, Marlene Sokol, Matt Soergel, Mill Cove Complex, Mount Olive Cemetery Green Cove Springs, National Liberty Party, New Castle Creek, Oakland Jacksonville, Old Chaseville Road, Reddie Point, Rogero Road, Roundhouse, Samuel Chase, Ted Edidin, Tim Gilmore, Timucuan Indians, United States Colored Troops, University Boulevard, William Marple, William Reddy

Pedrica Mendez’s House

Posted on September 26, 2017 | 1 comment

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When Padrica was a little girl in the 1940s, the Cuban community in Jacksonville surrounded her and her family with love and a yet larger sense of family.

One night as she left the opera in Rome, a photographer snapped her picture, wrote, “in omaggio alla sua bellezza,” or “in homage of your beauty,” on the back of the photograph, and gave it to her.

The fire that consumed the great two-story house next door jumped sparks at Padrica’s house.

Still what most struck Padrica were the cadences she heard in the Orthodox music of ancient Ethiopia that reminded her dearly, tearfully, of rhymes and end-lines from old “Negro spirituals.”

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Tagged Alvin Ailey, Bert Williams, Carmen Jones, Durkeeville, Ed Austin, Enrico Caruso, Frank Nero, Havana Night Club, Jacksonville, jaxpsychogeoTonyaa Weathersbee, Jennifer Chase, Joel McEachin, Josephine Baker, LaVilla, Manuel Rivera, Manuel's Tap Room, Mariano Stabile, MaVynee Betsch, Padrica Mendez, Pedro Mendez, Queen of Sheba, River City Renaissance, Solomon Shad, Sugar Hill, The Two Spot, Tim Gilmore, Victor Banjo, Virginia King

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