Tag Archives: River City Renaissance

Brewster Hospital in Jim Crow Jax

Posted on July 20, 2021 | Leave a comment

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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

LaVilla’s Progress Furniture Company

Posted on February 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

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Climb the stairs and see there’s more missing than remains of 318 Broad Street. Bernie would tell you, at Progress Furniture Company, 80 years ago, “Buy or Sell…We Treat You Well.” His father was one of two Romanian Jewish immigrants in Jacksonville named Isador Moskovitz. This collapsing commercial building provides a microcosm of decimated and mostly vanished LaVilla. A thistle blooms in bricks near the roof.

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Tagged 318 Broad Street, 324 Broad Street, Bernie Moskovitz, Black Masonic Temple Jacksonville, Broad Street Jacksonville, Broad Street LaVilla, Brooklyn Jacksonville, DeLoach Furniture, Gladys Klausner, Goony Golf, Herman Klausner, Isador Moskovitz, Jacksonville Jewish Center, Jacksonville Train Terminal, Kenneth Klausner, LaVilla, LBee Furniture, Liberty Furniture Company, Manuel Rivera, Manuel's Tap Room, Mayor Ed Austin, Noli Novak, Noli Novak artist, Olga Moskovitz, Paula Klausner, Paula Moskovitz, Progress Furniture Company, psychogeography Florida, Richmond Hotel Jacksonville, Richmond Hotel LaVilla, River City Renaissance, Southern Gothic Jacksonville, Terminal Hotel, Terminal Liquors, Terry DeLoach, Tim Gilmore, United Optical Outlet

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

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