Houston Street: Jacksonville's Red Light District

[Metro Jacksonville]

Houston Street: Jacksonville's Red Light District



Today, there's not much left, but 100 years ago Houston Street was the epicenter of the city's bustling Red Light District.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/695

[Ocklawaha]

OMG! I remember now! Only you left off the coolest of the railroad terminals and the most Easterly? It was the Atlantic and East Coast Railroad station, AKA: Florida East Coast freight Terminal. I could have been many things including a modern Amtrak or Commuter Rail station. Oh, I know the Union Terminal is WAY better but since they insist on once a month home show crowds there, we could have USED the old FEC FREIGHT STATION. The railroad entrance to those tracks or the A&EC was just west of the prime Osbourne parking lot, one can still see the bridge abutment along Bay street, when they tore out the bridge, they also filled in the street, it used to go down under the railroad. Before they came and "REDEVELOPED" the area, I had a friend that runs his train down at the outdoor railroad club track in Bostwick. He was shopping all the cool little stores along there and saw a "backyard" locomotive sitting in the window of one...


He bought it for something like $100 dollars and it worked fine. To buy a used one then or now, would cost a cool $3,0000-$100,000 dollars! He was SO HAPPY, and I was sick for a week... Oh how I wanted to get into that hobby.  I miss the tracks in the street (which would have converted to Trolley real easy) and the cool little stores that opened in some of those old buildings before the City bulldozers came along. 

I spent many happy hours around Houston Street looking for my "Daddy"... Mom never knew his name but she got his train number! Hee hee!

Just Kidding... Mom and Dad were SAINTS!

Ocklawaha

[second_pancake]

Cool story, but so sad!  I remember seeing the implosions and things on the news in the 90's (I'd just moved here then), but I was young and didn't really pay much attention to those things.  What a shame that the buildings aren't there anymore to house groups of new entrepeneurs or urban living spaces. ~sighs~

[thelakelander]

OMG! I remember now! Only you left off the coolest of the railroad terminals and the most Easterly? It was the Atlantic and East Coast Railroad station, AKA: Florida East Coast freight Terminal. I could have been many things including a modern Amtrak or Commuter Rail station.

You can see the terminal in the upper middle section of this image.  You can also see the commercial building density of Broad, Davis and Adams Streets in LaVilla.  The block of residential structures between the demolished railroad terminal and Adams was the epicenter of the bordello district.




Here's an aerial of this same area today.



Some images I scanned for an article on LaVilla in 2006.


we park on this building's foundation today.








link to full article on LaVilla's destruction: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/view/250/120/

[second_pancake]

WE had a second-empire style structure in JAX?  I think I'm going to cry!  I can't believe those were Nationally reconized and registered historic structures and we destroyed them! 

[Timkin]

Indeed sad!   Which is why im like a broken record about the few historic pieces that remain.

[hank]

Shouldn't someone go to jail over this!

[charis]

Regarding the picture of the gravel parking lot: (http://www.metrojacksonville.com/photos/index.php?level=picture&id=3452)

Just a couple of paces west of the sidewalk on Broad St., halfway between Forsyth and Houston, there is what looks like a tiled terrazzo floor with the large initials (2ft x 2ft) of what looks like "PW". It looks like it might have been the entry / foyer of a building.

Does anyone know what that "PW" stands for?  What building was there?

[urbanlibertarian]

PW?  A submissive husband or boyfriend, perhaps?

[Coolyfett]

PW?.....no telling what that could be. I am sure someone will figure it out on here.

[Miss Fixit]

Great (albeit terribly sad) story, Ennis.  The photo of the Hotel Flagler was interesting to  me - I collect vintage postcards, and just last night found one for this hotel.  I wondered where it was and now I know!  Based on my postcard searches alone, it looks like there were at one time dozens of large hotels (many architecturally significant) in downtown Jacksonville.  Have you done any stories on downtown's many hotels?

[Shwaz]

Isn't the Flagler Hotel now the Ambassador Hotel?