Tag Archives: Willowbranch Park

Lives and Afterlives of “The Green House” on Riverside Avenue

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:

Ed and Ruth Brown called the “Green House” home for about four decades and Ed died on Christmas Day, 2017. The house is most famous for when members of Lynyrd Skynyrd lived here, but its story also includes the Osky’s alligator heiress, a ballet master who studied with Ballanchine and attempts by fire and, yes, developers to destroy it.

Perhaps the only building designed solely by David Kosvich

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:

It may be the only building designed solely by David Kosvich. He left Chicago for Jax for two years, then went back home. He was only 29 years old when he died. What he left Jax is this magnificent three-story yellow brick apartment building a block from Willowbranch Park.

Remembering the Be-Ins at Willowbranch Park

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:

For the briefest of moments, it was the most magical time, wild yet somehow innocent. The be-ins at Willowbranch Park in the late ’60s featured a broil of young musicians, out of which rose the Allman Brothers Band. The be-ins meant long hair, beads and tie-dye, hippies walking barefoot through Riverside, cheap rent in old mansions, but more than anything, they meant music.

Two Stories for Mother’s Day

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

May be an image of 1 person

Two weird little stories for Mother’s Day. About two memorials to Patricia Ann Lynch Austin, former Jax first lady, one memorial missing a tree, the other accidentally raising hard questions about motherhood. My mother always encouraged my writing. She died three quarters of my life ago. Hopefully she’d like these two weird little stories.

Here’s the first: https://jaxpsychogeo.com/the-center-of-the-city/mother-and-child-sculpture-downtown/

& here’s the second: https://jaxpsychogeo.com/west-riverside-avondale/willowbranch-park-and-cenotaph-for-dogwood/

May be an image of 1 person

Bebe Deluxe, Storybook Pride Prom, and the History of Gay Pride at Willowbranch Park and Library

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

It’s the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, and at Willowbranch Library, an epicenter of gay rights history in Jacksonville, hundreds of supporters of gender and sexual minority young people rally in their defense after Jacksonville Public Libraries Director Tim Rogers canceled their sold-out Pride Prom.

Now there are two teen pride events, instead of one. The prom still takes place, at a now undisclosed location, a local church, and hundreds of supporters rally at Willowbranch Library to express their solidarity and love.