Our Jacksonville design carries the Florida alligator beneath an arched JACKSONVILLE and the line Florida Territory · Est. 1845, printed in a black, woodcut-style mark. The alligator is old Florida itself — the river-and-swamp country the city grew out of — and the 1845 date marks Florida statehood. It is a River City emblem: not the tourist Florida of postcards, but the lived-in city on the river that runs north.
What’s with the Prairie School? Jacksonville holds one of the largest collections of Prairie School buildings anywhere outside the Midwest — and the reason is fire. Walk through downtown and you find something that shouldn’t be here: the clean horizontal lines, deep eaves, and art-glass of the Prairie School — the Midwest’s modern architecture, the style of the Chicago avant-garde — transplanted onto a north-flowing Southern river. On May 3, 1901, nearly the entire downtown burned — 146 blocks, more than 2,300 buildings, the glow visible in Savannah — the largest urban fire in the southeastern United States. Into the ashes came a young New York architect named Henry John Klutho, who rebuilt the city in straight modern lines: the Laura Street Trio, the Dyal-Upchurch Building, and the St. James Building of 1912 — now City Hall — which stands among the largest Prairie School buildings in the world. River City is the modern Southern city nobody expects.
Why People Visit Jacksonville Florida
- Look up at the Laura Street Trio and the St. James Building downtown — the Prairie School rebuild of 1901 standing in straight modern lines.
- Walk both Riverwalks past Friendship Fountain, with the skyline across the north-flowing St. Johns.
- Stand under the Treaty Oak on the Southbank — a live oak centuries older than the city around it.
- Spend a beach day at Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, or Atlantic Beach — the barrier islands are inside the city limits.
- Visit Fort Caroline National Memorial and the Timucuan Preserve for the French colony of 1564, the river marshes the Timucua knew, and the preserved, sobering history at Kingsley Plantation.
- Photograph the fallen giants of Boneyard Beach on Big Talbot Island, and swim at Little Talbot or Hanna Park.
- Ride the tiny St. Johns River Ferry at Mayport and eat local shrimp where the boats come in.
- Browse the historic districts — San Marco’s 1920s square, Five Points, Riverside-Avondale’s leafy streets, Springfield’s restored blocks, and Mandarin on the river — where Harriet Beecher Stowe wintered and wrote.
- Catch the LaVilla story downtown, where the Harlem of the South once rang with jazz and blues.