Tag Archives: Tim Gilmore Jaxpsychogeo

New Story: Part One–River House Apartments/Riverside House/Rochester House

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Mary Todd Lincoln stayed in this Riverside house when it was located in Brooklyn and called Rochester House. After four months, she fled Jacksonville in the midst of a nervous breakdown. It’s one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood and the last of the hotels from the city’s Victorian tourist age. The nephew of a great Southern novelist has lived here for 40 years. Rachel remembers fondly her very own “River House ghost story.” Click below for part one of the story.

 

New Story: Casa Marina Hotel at Jacksonville Beach

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The other beach hotels all burned. Whichever presidents stayed here, and whether or not Jean Harlow and Al Capone did, the history of the Casa Marina at Jacksonville Beach includes an organ grinder and monkey, a vanished penthouse octagon bedroom, Victorian lace blouses and kolinsky furs. Here, Rachel and Dan shared wedding vows with their six year old son, a thousand ambitious business plans expanded and deflated, and the old building’s savior had his ashes spread into the ocean by surfboard.