Remembering Railroad Row

[thelakelander]

Ennis, congratulations on the scope invoked by this article.  We have been discussing the importance of this district to the growth and economy of the city for the past year---ever since we discovered this economic reactor of the past while researching the bordellos so long ago with Beth Slater.

I hadnt seen this piece before today, and its hard to project to our readers how much research you had to do in order to get this information compiled.  magnificent job!

Our history has been so destroyed, and falsified that you had to go back to original sources and references in the old papers of the time to determine what the buildings were used for.

But to be able to invoke even this partial view of what this all was like and what it could have been used for?

just genius.

Thanks.

Thanks.  As you know, we've been interested in the history of this district for years and this brief article doesn't highlight 99.5% of it's rich history and stories behind the people and buildings that once stood there (and even the few still standing).  Two of the sites in the soon to be released Reclaiming Jacksonville book (Jax Terminal Tunnels & WP Sumner Company) were once a part of this district.  Researching their past revealed additional stories, people, and companies from this district that all deserve to be topics of their own.



From an economic standpoint, there's no telling how many thousands of people were employed in the railroad industry by itself.  The train station alone employed 2,000.  That's equal to downtown attracting Everbank except Everbank won't bring as many spin off support jobs as the railroad and maritime industries did during that era.  While we can't recreate what was lost, learning and understanding downtown's economic history does help one to come to the realization why many of the redevelopment plans over the last half century have failed. 


Inside the Railway Express Agency's terminal in 1948.


Caribbean Fruit and Steamship Company providing bananas for produce trucks in 1948.

In short, we've focused too much on expensive gimmicks without attempting to lay the ground work for a natural self organizing sustainable urban environment.  Jacksonville's position of being a logistics community created the vibrant place that downtown once was.  While it doesn't necessarily hurt, throwing money at downtown isn't the most pressing concern.  How we over regulate the core, which stymies the natural market, should be the focus.  Perhaps its time to better take advantage of the river and railroad related assets that still remain in addition to modifying public policy?

[Ocklawaha]

This was an excellent piece Ennis!

Keeping the old waterfront is a major theme of many of our articles, and while it would indeed be cool to have a 'working waterfront' today, it's just not possible, at least not in any historic sense.

The changes that have occurred in the transportation of freight were already moving full force by the end of WWII. General merchandise boxcars were 'super sized,' and as distribution centers and warehousing moved away from the railroads in many locations, those cars morphed into semi-trailers. In the 60's and 70's the hottest ticket on the railroad was a solid block of 'piggyback TOFC semi-trailers' rolling non-stop between major metro centers. How much parking space would we have needed for a 100 car train of 200 vans, 5x each day?

Where there were once literally thousands of men loading and unloading individual boxes and crates, and bulk cargo by the net full, they were quickly replaced by large cranes, and fork lift trucks. Small steamships became much larger and started taking on a scale of truck-load lot proportions.

Some of this traffic could still have been loaded in a downtown waterfront such as ours, but as the train lengths grew, and the industry looked for economies, the container was born. Today maritime shipping is all about the 'TEU' or 20' foot container (larger containers are measured in 20' TEU's, so a 40' is 2 X TEU). With the containerized cargo came even larger cargo vessels, and today we are looking at truly aircraft carrier sized 'Post Panamax' ships.

These ships of 8,000 or more containers CAN be completely unloaded and set in a container yard, truck, or rail car, WITHOUT a human element.

No matter how hard we might have tried to keep a working waterfront, it wouldn't have happened and today we'd probably be complaining as the city was in roughly 1960 that the whole dock, warehouse, waterfront complex is rotting and falling into the St. Johns River.

I agree that this was a much more 'human' time, and the downtown was blessed by it's location. However today it is simply impractical to think anyone would want this labor intensive method of shipping for nostalgia's sake. As we struggle with hundreds of empty lots stupidly left in the wake of hopeful investors or irresponsible owners, imagine how much more we would struggle had that shipping industry stayed downtown. Safe to say the whole area south of Union and north of the River would be a massive container lot. Downtown Jacksonville would be straddling the Trout River.

Keeping a few of the old docks in place would have been wise, provided there would have been a way to maintain them through those transition years. Today, interesting little 'import' shops, food vendors and perhaps our local crab boat industry could call them home. But in a downtown where fishing in OUR river is illegal, and roller skates are a capital crime, I wouldn't hold out much hope.

So today we have a downtown created for automobiles, where we could have had one created for the container... Somewhere in all of this the HUMAN ELEMENT got left waiting for the next streetcar.

[BridgeTroll]

What affect did the attempt to transform Jacksonville into "The Bold New City of the South" impact the destruction of this area?  By that I mean the desire to transition the city from a blue collar industrial (rail and shipping) economy to a white collar financial center type economy... of the Atlanta model for example.

[stephendare]

What affect did the attempt to transform Jacksonville into "The Bold New City of the South" impact the destruction of this area?  By that I mean the desire to transition the city from a blue collar industrial (rail and shipping) economy to a white collar financial center type economy... of the Atlanta model for example.

By itself, the idea wasnt a bad one.

It was spurred by the fact that  Haydon Burns had an intuition about how a new florida exemption for the insurance and banking industry statute could be used.  Ed Ball and the porkchop gang had passed through the changes in order to give themselves fat tax loopholes in their various businesses, but in the process opened up florida to tax free, heavily subsidized insurance and bank relocations.

Burns was the first to recognize that the rest of the industry would be able to play under the same rules that Florida National Bank and Florida East Coast Rail insurers did.

He began marketing the city to those big industries.

Unfortunately then, as now, there was a small group of people who believed that you had to get rid of the 'blight' first.  which meant (as it does now) demolishing every structure that was being visibly used by 'the wrong set'---and utilizing the available land for parking.

[stephendare]

No matter how hard we might have tried to keep a working waterfront, it wouldn't have happened and today we'd probably be complaining as the city was in roughly 1960 that the whole dock, warehouse, waterfront complex is rotting and falling into the St. Johns River.

I agree that this was a much more 'human' time, and the downtown was blessed by it's location. However today it is simply impractical to think anyone would want this labor intensive method of shipping for nostalgia's sake. As we struggle with hundreds of empty lots stupidly left in the wake of hopeful investors or irresponsible owners, imagine how much more we would struggle had that shipping industry stayed downtown. Safe to say the whole area south of Union and north of the River would be a massive container lot. Downtown Jacksonville would be straddling the Trout River.

Keeping a few of the old docks in place would have been wise, provided there would have been a way to maintain them through those transition years. Today, interesting little 'import' shops, food vendors and perhaps our local crab boat industry could call them home. But in a downtown where fishing in OUR river is illegal, and roller skates are a capital crime, I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Ock, you raise great points about the state of the industry had we kept the industry downtown. 

But what would have happened if we had kept the passenger industry connection between rail and sea downtown?

What would you extrapolate would have happened?

How can we create the same kind of economic connetion and vibrancy using waterfront to rail connection today?

[tufsu1]

great article....can't wait for the book!

[thelakelander]

Keeping the old waterfront is a major theme of many of our articles, and while it would indeed be cool to have a 'working waterfront' today, it's just not possible, at least not in any historic sense.

Ock, I believe a working waterfront is possible but you can't get caught up on the ground level details of what the specific uses should be at this point.  I base that belief upon the successful transformation of similar districts in American cities all across the country (San Francisco, San Diego, etc. are good examples). 

While the waterfront of the past was port related and the area may not be suitable for container terminals, there's no reason a waterfront of the future can't offer more pleasure craft opportunities (think St. Petersburg or Miracle Mile) and be an environment that offers the possibility of small scale fishing, crabbing, charters, river cruises, etc. 

As for Commodore's Point, perhaps we should be trying to grow the remaining heavy maritime industries there instead of dreaming of ways to relocate them?  Perhaps some of the surface tailgate lots west of the Talleyrand should be repurposed for addition maritime related industry?  The river, rail, and expressway are already in place.  On the railroad front, while railyards won't be coming back, the terminal becoming an intermodal transportation hub would be a huge economic benefit.

[ubben]

Great article. And good points in the comment section about the nature of the shipping business. Yeah it sucks what we've lost, but a huge part of that is simple changing of the industry. We have a shallow, curvy river. The shipping had to move toward the ocean as the ships went to mammoth size. But can't we bring the rail depot back to downtown? That is something we can control.

[BridgeTroll]

What affect did the attempt to transform Jacksonville into "The Bold New City of the South" impact the destruction of this area?  By that I mean the desire to transition the city from a blue collar industrial (rail and shipping) economy to a white collar financial center type economy... of the Atlanta model for example.

By itself, the idea wasnt a bad one.

It was spurred by the fact that  Haydon Burns had an intuition about how a new florida exemption for the insurance and banking industry statute could be used.  Ed Ball and the porkchop gang had passed through the changes in order to give themselves fat tax loopholes in their various businesses, but in the process opened up florida to tax free, heavily subsidized insurance and bank relocations.

Burns was the first to recognize that the rest of the industry would be able to play under the same rules that Florida National Bank and Florida East Coast Rail insurers did.

He began marketing the city to those big industries.

Unfortunately then, as now, there was a small group of people who believed that you had to get rid of the 'blight' first.  which meant (as it does now) demolishing every structure that was being visibly used by 'the wrong set'---and utilizing the available land for parking.

While the idea may not have been a bad one it seems they put the cart before the horse.  Destroying rows of buildings in anticipation of shiny high rise office buildings filled with white collar office workers.  Of course getting rid of the blight used by the "wrong set" was a side "benefit".

[simms3]

What affect did the attempt to transform Jacksonville into "The Bold New City of the South" impact the destruction of this area?  By that I mean the desire to transition the city from a blue collar industrial (rail and shipping) economy to a white collar financial center type economy... of the Atlanta model for example.

The difference is in how the cities went about transforming their economic bases.  If you fly into Hartsfield and ride the train into the city, you will see old industrial communities and warehouses from an earlier era still standing for the whole 15 miles up.  Castleberry Hill is by no means the only remaining warehouse district and it is by far not the most successful.  There are brick stacks still remaining all over the city, and this holds true for Chattanooga, Nashville and Birmingham.

These cities did not view complete demolition and destruction as the way to transform their economies.  Sure they abandoned these older areas and their downtowns and developed the burbs, but compared to Jacksonville they largely left their inner areas intact.  Now, especially in Atlanta's and Nashville's case these inner areas are seeing a rebirth - and they aren't reverting back to their industrial uses.  They are becoming upscale office, residential and shopping districts catering to 21st century industries (tech, media, engineering, etc) and appealing to the creative classes, the wealthy and the educated.  Facebook has located their southeastern office to an old warehouse complex on the Westside called the Brickworks, and it is convenient to Georgia Tech and has other offices and plenty of restaurants and bars.  An old meatpacking plant that is rather large (120,000 SF and 4 floors) is something I get to work on, and now features upscale shopping and office tenants from Room & Board to Free People to Billy Reid to Calypso St. Barth and a 4 star restaurant, among others (as well as the most popular GT college bar - Ormsby's which is in the basement and has indoor Bocci Ball).

It will be next to impossible for Jacksonville to create these sort of atmospheres that attract and fuel young professional communities, universities, tech firms, etc etc.  It will be next to impossible for Jacksonville to get a good tourism industry going outside of the beach (and even the beaches aren't handled well imo).

Nashville is really an impressive city - moreso than Charlotte in my opinion, and it shows really well.  It has lofts and condos and density all over the place, much of it adaptive reuse.  It has all of its bars on 2 streets downtown (like Bay St times 25 at least).  It has tourism.  It has a cultural identity.  It has warehouses converted for 21st century uses.  It also has Vanderbilt which functions much like Georgia Tech and Emory do in terms of attracting top talent and top firms to the city.  The synergy going on results from many things, but one of the cornerstones is the infrastructure that has been preserved there and can now serve important uses.

Unfortunately Jacksonville went about its 20th century transformation a bit differently and will now have a more difficult time competing as a 21st century city where the past is a large part of the key to the future.

[simms3]

And might I mention especially considering that Atlanta has the second largest and seventh largest datacenters in the world - these are in prewar buildings.  One is downtown behind the old Macy's and just traded hands in one of the most publicized deals (the front/Macy's portion is now converted retail and event space, with bars fronting Peachtree).  One is on the Westside and is about 1 million sf.

Datacenters are taking over these old buildings.  They go to where there is a demand for datacenters, and where there is infrastructure for datacenters.  Jacksonville could have potentially capitalized on this had it kept its stock.

[BridgeTroll]

These cities did not view complete demolition and destruction as the way to transform their economies.  Sure they abandoned these older areas and their downtowns and developed the burbs, but compared to Jacksonville they largely left their inner areas intact.

I guess my question is why... Why did Jax decide to demolish a section of town rather than waiting for it's reuse possibilities?  My hypothesis is that they were in a hurry.  (and the whole undesirable thing...) Demolish now... ie... pave the way for future new construction.  Of course with hind sight we are witness to the fact that the desired redevelopment never occurred and we are left with open space...

[stephendare]

These cities did not view complete demolition and destruction as the way to transform their economies.  Sure they abandoned these older areas and their downtowns and developed the burbs, but compared to Jacksonville they largely left their inner areas intact.

I guess my question is why... Why did Jax decide to demolish a section of town rather than waiting for it's reuse possibilities?  My hypothesis is that they were in a hurry.  (and the whole undesirable thing...) Demolish now... ie... pave the way for future new construction.  Of course with hind sight we are witness to the fact that the desired redevelopment never occurred and we are left with open space...

You can see the literal exact same dynamic still at play in the present bridge troll.

Consider this insane rich to immediately demolish the courthouse and old city hall on the possibility that an as yet undesigned convention center might get the approval, and might find the funding to get built in a decade or so.

Or how about SPAR's campaign to demolish the old heart of Jacksonville hotel and all those pesky historic structures.

It defies common sense, yet the people who subscribe to this madness simply cannot be dissuaded in argument.

Unfortunately we have listened to this kind of bullshit for way too long. 

It is time we stopped.

[Ocklawaha]

No matter how hard we might have tried to keep a working waterfront, it wouldn't have happened and today we'd probably be complaining as the city was in roughly 1960 that the whole dock, warehouse, waterfront complex is rotting and falling into the St. Johns River.

I agree that this was a much more 'human' time, and the downtown was blessed by it's location. However today it is simply impractical to think anyone would want this labor intensive method of shipping for nostalgia's sake. As we struggle with hundreds of empty lots stupidly left in the wake of hopeful investors or irresponsible owners, imagine how much more we would struggle had that shipping industry stayed downtown. Safe to say the whole area south of Union and north of the River would be a massive container lot. Downtown Jacksonville would be straddling the Trout River.

Keeping a few of the old docks in place would have been wise, provided there would have been a way to maintain them through those transition years. Today, interesting little 'import' shops, food vendors and perhaps our local crab boat industry could call them home. But in a downtown where fishing in OUR river is illegal, and roller skates are a capital crime, I wouldn't hold out much hope.

Ock, you raise great points about the state of the industry had we kept the industry downtown. 

But what would have happened if we had kept the passenger industry connection between rail and sea downtown?

What would you extrapolate would have happened?

How can we create the same kind of economic connetion and vibrancy using waterfront to rail connection today?

Keeping the old waterfront is a major theme of many of our articles, and while it would indeed be cool to have a 'working waterfront' today, it's just not possible, at least not in any historic sense.

Ock, I believe a working waterfront is possible but you can't get caught up on the ground level details of what the specific uses should be at this point.  I base that belief upon the successful transformation of similar districts in American cities all across the country (San Francisco, San Diego, etc. are good examples). 

While the waterfront of the past was port related and the area may not be suitable for container terminals, there's no reason a waterfront of the future can't offer more pleasure craft opportunities (think St. Petersburg or Miracle Mile) and be an environment that offers the possibility of small scale fishing, crabbing, charters, river cruises, etc. 

As for Commodore's Point, perhaps we should be trying to grow the remaining heavy maritime industries there instead of dreaming of ways to relocate them?  Perhaps some of the surface tailgate lots west of the Talleyrand should be repurposed for addition maritime related industry?  The river, rail, and expressway are already in place.  On the railroad front, while railyards won't be coming back, the terminal becoming an intermodal transportation hub would be a huge economic benefit.

BINGO! I believe both Stephendare and Lakelander have hit on the crux of the situation as it might have/could have/should develop.

Today a working waterfront is the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, the cruise terminal in Norfolk, or the reinvented 'Pike' in Long Beach (though I'll always miss the old seedy one there too!) 

Had we preserved just a few of those buildings for the sake of future water related recreation, and small retail, fishing, charter business, it would be a magnet throughout the south today. The fact remains however that it couldn't be done for myriad reasons. One of the prime reasons was the 'new' Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Building in the late 1950's cut off the rail lines to anything east of that point (current CSX tower). Nobody could afford to sit on those sites until we moved from a production/industrial society, to a barren information age city. Having seen the waterfront in both era's the old one would never had made it to 1970 without massive infusions of cash and little hope for a ROI.

The 'Bold New City' concept was flawed in that it removed human space for automobile space. Tearing down the waterfront as bad as it was and replacing the most valuable land in Florida (at that time) with a massive parking lot speaks volumes to a lack of vision. Sure we snagged a few big dog banks and insurance companies, and perhaps hung on to some retail for a bit longer, but the age of the consolidation of industry blew right past us. Meanwhile we jealously guarded our riverfront parking lots!

Godbold's Jacksonville Landing concept I believe was largely based on recovering some of what we once had, but the scale of the place, lack of a fixed transit connection, broken parking replacement promises, horrible maintenance, and very limited river or street interaction have given us another 'tumbling wharf on the waterfront'. Albeit one that COULD be fixed.

I think Stephen is on to a cutting edge idea that we could explore further and push toward reality. There would be some major obstacles to overcome and timing of each element as it came on line would be critical.

Getting Amtrak and the intercity bus companies back into a single downtown station building would help.

A streetcar connection between that historic station, punching all the way through the historic downtown core, to the Hyatt, Newnan, Beaver, Stadium, Gateway, would also kick start the movement of people through the core again.

Lakelander's concept of turning the landing and Wells Fargo building's retail inside-out to face the street would work. The addition of a historic element missing from most such remakes is the broad awnings which once protected downtown's citizens from the blazing summer heat or rain.

A vigorous recruitment of small cruise lines:
http://blountsmallshipadventures.com/where-we-go/2012-atlantic-coastal-waterways?view=itinerary
http://www.americancruiselines.com/Search?r=Southeast%20US&d=By%20Departure%20Date&s=By%20Ship
http://www.pearlseascruises.com/  (Under Development to our area)
http://www.smallshipcruises.com/cruisereport/cruisereportradissonsevenseas.shtml (Currently serving Tampa-Gulf area)

Roundtable discussions between Jaxport Cruise Executives - Disney - Amtrak - Port of Sanford - Greyhound Charters - JIA and the small ship operators could create a thriving market with a connectivity unlike any in the country. It could also revive the St. Johns River as a regular cruise route.

Development of a multipurpose Florida Marine Welcome Center - Visit Jacksonville - Small Cruise Terminal - with more retail along the waterfront could be the dynamo that gives it the needed attractiveness to the various private carriers and theme parks. 

Using Stephens premise, there is no reason why Amtrak couldn't run into downtown with regularly scheduled trains carrying cruise passengers. No reason why we can't market the southeast, Disney and all the rest, right from our waterfront.

We need more interaction between the water and the city, even at the landing it is very restricted. We also need to lighten up on our social laws that prevent an executive from seeing a fisherman or skater while enjoying a lunch on the bulkhead. How many muggers wear skates?

What affect did the attempt to transform Jacksonville into "The Bold New City of the South" impact the destruction of this area?  By that I mean the desire to transition the city from a blue collar industrial (rail and shipping) economy to a white collar financial center type economy... of the Atlanta model for example.

I think the sell out that this city started in 1932-36 to the automobile industry and completed by replacing entire districts of human activity with more space for automobiles is at the heart if not THE heart of the matter. A little wisdom from south of the border, quoting the mayor of Bogota, "roads move automobiles - fixed transit moves people."

[thelakelander]

Ock, I know your post regarding preservation focuses moreso on the waterfront but I don't see why Railroad Row (specifically the area bounded by Water/Bay, I-95, Adams, and Clay) absolutely "had" to be leveled.  Also, in regards to working waterfronts, I believe the Shipyards and JEA sites offer a ton of opportunity for a variety of uses.