A Different Waterfront

[Coolyfett]

Good pics lake!! I have seen many old school flicks of the city. I have never seen these before though. That pic where the 1st Fuller Warren is gone is crazy!!!

There is one pic where it shows new development on the north bank, but I can't tell if it is Bay Street or the street behind the courthouse that runs to the Landing parking lot going west. I don't know the name of that street. International Coast Road?? I may be wrong but it looks as if it was once a continues street under the Main Street bridge. Why in the hell would they close that off??

Those old docks are actually the second set built. And they became invested with rats. They had a major rat problem down in that area. Getting rid of the those docks was a good thing. I used to work at Jax Port where they bring the new Toyotas in over there in Talleyrand. Man the rats over there were tough!! They were super strong!! Scary.

Is it true that the Modis Building is halfway on the river??

[Charles Hunter]

I think you are talking about Coast Line Drive (named for the RR company - we like to name streets after prominent businesses that locate on them), that ran along the river (actually over the river on pilings) from the (then) Atlantic Coast Line building, under the Main Street Bridge, to behind the Court House.  With exception of the old Civic Auditorium (now the Times-Union Center), it was river on one side, parking lots on the other.  It was taken out to create the Jacksonville Landing - only the part upriver from the Main Street Bridge was removed, the rest is still there in front of the Hyatt and Court House parking.

I don't think the river extends under Modis, but is under much of the court house parking, and possibly some of the Hyatt and Landing.

[deathstar]

I am amazed at the location where The Landing sits today, what was once there before. The parking lot made me cringe, and I couldn't imagine the coastline today with a huge parking lot like that.

[David]

These pics are still great!

Lake, I do see what you're saying now about how preserving it would've kept some of the vibrancy in downtown.

I'm in Seattle again and I've spent some time down by the fish market and it's truly impressive how they've held onto this part of their history for so long. The underground tour rocks! I'm glad that the Jacksonville chamber of commerce is taking a field trip here. Seattle seems like they're doing alright, even if there's too many smelly hippies!

recycle your recyclables, mannnnnnnnnnn

[heights unknown]

When looking at many of those pics, it brings to mind the fact that in the 50's and 60's, Arlington, a large part of the westside, Roosevelt Boulevard area, and most of Southside didn't exist, yet Jacksonville's population within the city proper was over 200,000; this attests that Jax was indeed an "urban city" back in the day.

Heights Unknown

[lindab]

I worked every summmer at Weisenfeld Warehouses doing paper work on sugar shipments. It really was a different waterfront. It was so busy with warehouses stuffed with cargo going in or off ships. The warehouses formed narrow lanes packed with trucks and hand carts moving goods. Down on the waterfront wooden piers extended into the river. The smell of tar was everywhere. The river was polluted as heck but it didn't stop pods of dolphins from traveling downstream under the bridges. Manatees were always swimming around the docks. The working waterfront provided lots of people with jobs- muscle power work, buyers, clerks, transport men. I'm not sure those jobs were ever replaced when the warehouse districts were destroyed because the new shipping moved to containers and instead of food cargoes it became shiploads of cars and oil.  The scale of working waterfronts became more mechanized industrial. What we had before was dirty, gritty and more human scaled.
I don't think our city will ever go back to that way of doing business.

[thelakelander]

We were a dense blue collar city, similar to the older coastal cities back in those days.  Like those cities, the original 30 mile city has declined in population big time.  That's something consolidation has hidden.

[lindab]

Very true and worthy of much more attention.

[Ocklawaha]

Certainly it was a mistake to remove all of the history from downtown. The scene by tne Maxwell House Plant shows a rail terminal that "MIGHT" be a rare shot of the old F&J depot. One I thought would have been long gone and missed seeing. Lots of hidden treasures were dumped, dozied and filled when we did this...

BUT, cutting some slack where due, when this was going on, freeways were the new idea in transportation, "our saviors".

Every Waterfront from Bangor to Boca looked just like ours.

Our City WAS BOLD to break with the pack and do something different (even it it turned out wrong).

Coast Line Drive, and Southbank were all improvements to enhance and attract big business bucks. At the time the Auto-centric society would go cruise the drive and marvel at the pretty river.

Downtown was still the center of retail, wholesale, restaurants and entertainment in the early 1960's. BUT it was dying due to strip malls with easy parking. The City attempted to save the  retail core (what a novel thought) by providing lots and lots of parking. Eventually the malls opened and downtown fell apart, abandoned. I'm just happy I remember some of those days.

Let's see where being bold takes us next...

OCKLAWAHA

[deathstar]

Have we dug ourselves so far into down into a deep stink hole, that any direction from any future Mayors will ever take us back to a Jacksonville like in all these pictures from the past? Makes me sick to my stomach to see how it once was, and where we are today in some places. I feel like School Number Four is one the last buildings that, if ever tore down, we'll look back on and go "damn, remember when? coulda, shoulda, woulda..."

[Coolyfett]

PS4 shouldn't get torn down. people like how downtown used to be vs how it is today? Thats interesting. Id rather have The Landing, Hyatt, Berkman than the wharfs.

[Keith-N-Jax]

Though it can and hopefully will one day be better,I do like downtown now vs the old somewhat,but its interesting seeng the old pics.

[jeh1980]

Do you have any photos of the riverfront from the 1970s?

[deathstar]

I think the Riverfront in the 70's looked similar, just pre-skyscrapers look, so not much difference I believe.

[Keith-N-Jax]

Would be nice to see CSX do that flag again for the 4th, and something else for other holidays.