Jacksonville Florida — Retro Vintage History

What's with the Prairie School? Walk through downtown Jacksonville 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 Frank Lloyd Wright's Chicago — transplanted onto a north-flowing Southern river. Jacksonville holds the largest collection of Prairie School buildings anywhere outside the Midwest, and the reason is fire. In 1901 nearly the entire downtown burned, and the young architect Henry John Klutho rebuilt it in straight modern lines. The St. James Building of 1912 — now City Hall — stands among the largest Prairie School buildings in the world. River City is the modern Southern city nobody expects.

Jacksonville sits at a bend in the St. Johns River, on ground the Timucua people knew long before Europeans arrived. The French built Fort Caroline near the river's mouth in 1564, one of the earliest European settlements in what is now the United States. The British called the low river crossing the Cow Ford. In 1822 the town was platted and named for Andrew Jackson, Florida's first territorial governor, and Florida entered the Union as a state in 1845 — the date the city's alligator emblem still carries.

By the late 1800s Jacksonville was the largest city in Florida, a busy river port shipping timber and cotton and a winter resort billed as a "Winter City in a Summer Land." Then came the Great Fire of May 3, 1901 — one of the largest urban fires in American history, which leveled the downtown in eight hours. The rebuild made the city. Klutho's Prairie School towers rose from the ashes, and within a few years Jacksonville reinvented itself again, this time on film.

Hollywood before Hollywood. Between 1908 and 1922 more than thirty silent-film studios set up along the river, and Jacksonville called itself the Winter Film Capital of the World. The mild winters and river light drew the cameras south years before California claimed them; Norman Studios, in the Arlington neighborhood, survives today as a National Historic Landmark. A few blocks away, the LaVilla district became known as the Harlem of the South — a center of Black business, jazz, and blues, and the boyhood home of writer and civil-rights leader James Weldon Johnson.

A river that runs the wrong way. The St. Johns is one of the few major rivers in North America that flows south to north, draining toward the Atlantic past seven bridges inside the city limits. The river is the reason Jacksonville exists and the spine it still grows along — and a Navy town besides, with generations of sailors stationed at Mayport and NAS Jacksonville who carry River City with them wherever the fleet sends them.

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.

Today Jacksonville is the largest city by land area in the contiguous United States and home to one of the nation's largest urban park systems — barrier-island beaches, 80,000 acres of parks, and a downtown of Prairie School towers along a north-flowing river. Our retro Jacksonville, FL collection draws on that layered story: the Great Fire and the rebuild, the silent-film years, the alligator and the river, the River City pride that travels with everyone who has ever called it home.

Jacksonville, FL — Travel Guide

Visiting Jacksonville, FL Today

Jacksonville stretches along the St. Johns River and the Atlantic coast — the largest city by land area in the contiguous US, with room for a downtown of historic architecture, a string of beach towns, and one of the nation's biggest park systems.

Architecture, the River & the Beaches

For visitors planning things to do in Jacksonville, FL:

• Walk the downtown Prairie School blocks — the Laura Street Trio and the St. James Building (now City Hall), Klutho's rebuilt city.
• See the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, riverfront galleries with formal gardens on the St. Johns.
• Visit Norman Studios in Arlington, a National Historic Landmark from the silent-film era.
• Stroll the Riverwalk and Friendship Fountain for skyline and north-flowing-river views.
• Relax at the Jacksonville Beaches — Jax, Neptune, and Atlantic Beach, with Mayport at the river's mouth.

Why People Visit Jacksonville, FL

Jacksonville rewards travelers who like a city that surprises them: Prairie School architecture in the Deep South, a river that flows north to the sea, miles of Atlantic beach, and a deep Navy heritage at Mayport and NAS Jacksonville. It is a lived-in River City, not a postcard — and that is the appeal.

For deeper history research in Jacksonville, Florida, useful contacts include (1) the Jacksonville Historical Society, (2) the Jacksonville Public Library's local-history collection, (3) the State Archives of Florida, (4) the Duval County Clerk of Courts records office, and (5) the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission. For travel information, useful contacts include (1) Visit Jacksonville, (2) the JAX Chamber, (3) the City of Jacksonville Parks, Recreation & Community Services Department, (4) the Florida State Parks office, and (5) the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and JAX airport information desk.