Convention center, Downtown on draft list for Curry

[thelakelander]

The difference in numbers only grows when you start factoring in population of adjacent communities (within the core counties). For example, using just Duval, Jefferson, and Shelby counties....

Duval County Population (this would include Jax, LaVilla, San Marco, Brooklyn...)
1870 - 11,921
1880 - 19,431
1890 - 26,800
1900 - 39,733


Jefferson County Population (this would include Louisville and adjacent cities)
1870 - 118,953
1880 - 146,010
1890 - 188,598
1900 - 232,549


Shelby County Population (this would include Memphis and adjacent cities)
1870 - 76,378
1880 - 78,430
1890 - 112,740
1900 - 153,557

So even assuming 80k winter residents (can you provide a link for that number?) in Jax and absolutely zero visitors (an unrealistic assumption) in larger peer cities, the overall numbers still don't add up. Plus, considering the others were larger port cities, at the time, they'd have railroads (like the L&N Railroad), dockworkers, stevedores, etc. as well.

[thelakelander]

^That link says 100,000 tourist between January and April each year during the 1880s and 1890s. That number is spread out over 4 months. It also claims that the city only had two dozen hotels. Those numbers really don't add up to the other city's base numbers. Unfortunately, to prove the claim made, one would have to know how many tourist were visiting the other communities during the same time period.

Take Louisville for example. Yes, it was more industrial. However, that doesn't mean it did not have destinations and events that attracted tourist from the region. Around page 5 of this link, it talks about Louisville during the late 19th century (including events like the Southern Exposition of industry and technology and the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs):

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2008/9/17-louisville-bennett-gatz/200809_louisville.pdf

So yes, when it comes to urban vibrancy and tourism, it's still a stretch to make a claim that Jax was only second to New Orleans, when we don't have the tourism information on other communities to truly compare.

[thelakelander]

Besides, logically thinking, what type of an economy would produce a downtown dominated by wharves, railroads, bordellos, and hotels?

The other downtowns (like Memphis, Louisville, Nashville, etc.) were dominated by wharves, railroads, bordellos and hotels as well.  These were pretty common uses during that era in America's urban history.

[simms3]

^^^I hate to dispute Stephen right now because I'm feeling particularly friendly with him these days, but Stephen also made the point earlier on that "Atlanta was a railroad city while Jax was a port city" and he used that to drive home his point that railroad cities were boring and port cities were not.

Can't have an argument work both ways.  Judging from its size, stature, and notoriety, Atlanta was probably more of a railroad city than Jax was a port city, though Atlanta didn't have a port and Jax also had the railways.

Memphis and Louisville were definitely river port cities.  Cincinnati too.  And Pittsburgh.  These cities along with St. Louis fed the New Orleans economy.  So the same characters in NOLA were also in these other river towns.

[thelakelander]

Even then, the economy was based on cotton and hardwood lumber, planing and milling---very labor intensive, explaining the population numbers and not conducive to the wealthy travelers that are central to tourism.

Minus the cotton, much of our economy was based on labor intensive industries like hardwood lumber, planing, milling, shipbuilding, turpentine/naval stores, etc. In reality, there's not much difference in these cities during that era, other than sheer size and scale. A few like Louisville, New Orleans, Memphis were much larger and denser.

Yes, we had some wealthy tourist but the scale wasn't anywhere near a level to prove that Jax was the second only to New Orleans in tourism and urban vibrancy. While urban vibrancy is easily proven with population, density numbers, etc. (there were several places just as or more vibrant than Jax during the 1880s/90s), the tourism part is like nailing jello to a wall without some factual apples to apples data to add to the conversation.

[ProjectMaximus]

^^^I hate to dispute Stephen right now because I'm feeling particularly friendly with him these days, but Stephen also made the point earlier on that "Atlanta was a railroad city while Jax was a port city" and he used that to drive home his point that railroad cities were boring and port cities were not.

Can't have an argument work both ways.  Judging from its size, stature, and notoriety, Atlanta was probably more of a railroad city than Jax was a port city, though Atlanta didn't have a port and Jax also had the railways.

Memphis and Louisville were definitely river port cities.  Cincinnati too.  And Pittsburgh.  These cities along with St. Louis fed the New Orleans economy.  So the same characters in NOLA were also in these other river towns.

I like the discussion and the fleshing out of the ideas, actually.  I always do.  And I don't conflate rail with 'boring', I just equate ports with 'diversity'.  Coastal cities in particular tend to have an international flavor around their ports, and Jville was certainly an example of this.  Famously 'a hundred languages were spoken along Bay Street', according to Bob Broward, who grew up during that era.

Railroad hubs have an interesting effect on cities.  Lots and lots of men work them, and they tend to be single, traveling with their company from one work site to the next with loneliness and disposable cash.  Railroads and military installments mean lots of prostitution and gay subcultures, and depending on the Vice Cultures of a city, they have profound influences on the overall cultures.  When the bordellos are owned primarily by men (Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, for example) they tend to have an industrial outlook: Economy of resources and investment, an emphasis on the product, and a no nonsense, assets driven kind of practice.  Where they are primarily owned by women, (Atlanta, Jacksonville, New Orleans) they have a different effect.  Ambiance, mood, dancing and the like are emphasized.  The Madames of Storyville in New Orleans and La Villa in Jacksonville invested in entertainment and related enterprises.  They also owned saloons, dance halls, hotels and entertainment groups and created cultural networks around those inter related businesses for the simple reason that they paid entertainers, and as a result were the mid wives of Jazz. The businessmen of Chicago used that same ethos of investing in new (and primarily american) cultural communities and as a result, Jazz, modern art, impressionism and the like were the realm of bordellos, steak houses, gambling joints, and speakeasies during Prohibiition, twenty years later.

Any chance you'll be leading a walking tour of this history? Is any of it still left standing?

[thelakelander]

Umm....ok. No one ever said Jax wasn't a small tourist town and seaport during the late 1880s and 1890s. That's a different animal than a blanket statement claiming only New Orleans was more vibrant.

[finehoe]

While urban vibrancy is easily proven with population, density numbers, etc.

I don't think it's a given that larger population/density automatically equals more vibrancy.  Look at Gainesville.  It's without a doubt smaller than Jacksonville, yet it certainly feels more vibrant.  I think the point Stephen is making is that the type of people a city attracts matters more than sheer numbers.

[thelakelander]

Gainesville's core has a larger population density than Jax's downtown core does. UF has more students staying on campus (9,200) than all the residents of the Northbank, Southbank and Brooklyn combined (maybe 3,500 tops). Nevertheless, I wouldn't call it or Jax one of the most vibrant cores in Florida, much less an entire region of the country. I see the point Stephen is trying to make. It's just an opinion that's pretty hard to prove when you're outright discounting other communities that were significantly larger and attracted a good amount of visitors themselves.

[thelakelander]

Miami Beach was considered the major tourism center by the 1920s and this source claims it was drawing nearly 2 million tourist annually by 1940. Well before South Florida's explosion in growth in the mid-to-late 20th century.

http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4027/

[finehoe]

Nevertheless, I wouldn't call it or Jax one of the most vibrant cores in Florida, much less an entire region of the country.

Who cares?  That isn't my point.  All I'm saying is that if 50 years from now someone argued that Jacksonville was a more vibrant place in 2015 than Gainesville because Jacksonville had a population of 800,000 while Gainesville's was only 125,000 they would clearly be wrong.

[thelakelander]

^A few quick things....

1. While once vibrant during its heyday, it's a real stretch to claim that activity in DT Jax was only rivaled by New Orleans. Jax has always been a second tier region city and just about every American city out there was significantly more vibrant prior to the 1950s.

In the south it was only rivaled by New Orleans, especially between the civil war and the civil rights era.

This is a 100 year span. Addison Mizner died in 1933. So should the claim be especially between the civil war and the Florida Land Boom for better accuracy since Miami Beach clearly surpassed anything Jax had been in the 19th century by the 1920s?

It was one of the few southern economies that wasn't only based on agriculture, a bona fide multicultural coastal town, and an international port.  There was a lot of commerce, trade, tourism and very special things that only happened here.

Before the age of the railroad, steamships and paddleboats ruled the day. Most of the major cities along the Mississippi River and it's tributaries saw hundreds of thousands of passengers penetrating their boundaries during this 19th century era.  At the time, Jax was was a small little place. Their economies were not only based on agriculture. There was a lot of commerce, trade, tourism and very special things happening there in the 19th century as well. So perhaps we should limit the comparison to coastal cities in select states of the south? We'll then need some caveat to exclude 19th century Savannah and Charleston.

Keep in mind that until Mizener really developed south Florida, Jax and Tampa were the big cities of the State.  Orlando was cheap orange growing territory until Disney moved in, Miami was a one stop wonder until cocaine transformed it in the late 1970s,

Mizner didn't develop South Florida. He was an architect. Both the Bay area and Miami/South Florida effectively surpassed our region by the end of the 1920s land boom.

In the whole of the south that left Jacksonville Atlanta, New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, and Nashville.

Other places of decent size in the 100 year time frame given would have been the Texas cities (I consider Texas southern), Memphis, Louisville, Richmond, Norfolk, Birmingham, Mobile and DC (it was carved out of Virginia/Maryland). I'd say Baltimore too, since it was south of the Mason Dixon.

Charleston was so poverty stricken and agriculturally dependent that it never really blossomed into a center for the middle and upper classes nationally.  Jacksonville had the navy, the shipping, the industry, logging, turpentine, banking and tourism.

Savannah had a similar economic base during the 1860s to 1960s suggested time span.

Atlanta was landlocked, and railroad built, which limited it from the outright diversity of an ocean port city.  It was bigger, most of the time, but not legendary for its nightlife.

So there's a clear personal bias between landlocked city and ocean port city. Hey, I prefer waterfront cities as well. However, I won't deduct vibrancy points for being landlocked in the age of the railroad. With that said, Memphis and many of those river cities were legendary for their nightlife. These places were hubs of commerce, nightlife, transportation, etc. as america expanded west during the late 19th century. I wouldn't outright claim they had less than 100,000 visitors over a four month span in the 1880s and 1890s without some proof suggesting otherwise.

Jacksonville was what was called 'wide open' during the first half of the 20th Century.  It was a fun, rocking place to be.

No dispute here. So was Louisville and Memphis. They were just 5 to 10 times larger during that era, with a ton of more density and people traveling through them.

[thelakelander]

Nevertheless, I wouldn't call it or Jax one of the most vibrant cores in Florida, much less an entire region of the country.

Who cares?  That isn't my point.  All I'm saying is that if 50 years from now someone argued that Jacksonville was a more vibrant place in 2015 than Gainesville because Jacksonville had a population of 800,000 while Gainesville's was only 125,000 they would clearly be wrong.

I guess. Luckily, I'm not doing that. I've provided some extra analysis of why we shouldn't assume that Jax was the second most vibrant place in the south, over a 100 year span, only to New Orleans. It's quite a silly assumption when you really sit down and think about it.

[thelakelander]

Lake, you do know that the south florida tourism industry collapsed after the land boom crash and great depression, right?

http://floridahistory.org/landboom.htm

Not to levels as low as Jax's 1880s numbers.

Henry Flagler, who is known as the father of Florida Tourism built the largest tourist hotel in St. Augustine (I'm sure this has just slipped your mind)
And he effectively founded Miami just prior to 1900...before that it wasn't really even a town.

https://roadtripusa.com/atlantic-coast/henry-flagler-father-of-florida-tourism/

Don't forget about Julia Tuttle, "The Mother of Miami". After years of trying, she convinced Flagler to expand to Miami by giving him some of her land for a station and development. Also, don't forget about Henry Plant. Flagler was along the east coast. Plant's railroad resulted in major development in Central Florida and Tampa. Plant also built resorts. The Tampa Bay Hotel (now a part of UT) is a pretty big place.

Though you've probably never heard of the man, you can't travel very far along the east coast of Florida without coming under the influence of Henry Flagler, who almost singlehandedly turned what had been swampy coastline into one of the world's most popular tourist destinations. After making a fortune as John D. Rockefeller's partner in the Standard Oil Company, in the early 1880s Flagler came to St. Augustine with his wife, who was suffering from health problems. He found the climate agreeable, but the facilities sorely lacking, so he embarked on construction of the 540-room Hotel Ponce de León, which opened in 1888. The hotel, the first major resort in Florida, was an instant success, and Flagler quickly expanded his operations, building the first railroad along the coast south to Palm Beach, where he opened the world's largest hotel, the now-demolished Royal Poinciana, in 1894, joined by The Breakers in 1901 and his own palatial home, Whitehall, in 1902.

Meanwhile, Flagler was busy extending his railroad south, effectively founding the new city of Miami in 1897 when he opened the deluxe Royal Palm Hotel.

Coinciding with the hotel, the city of St. Augustine began their reconstruction of fake historic landmarks to complement the North Florida tourism boom.  After the Land Boom went bust, even St. Augustine didn't really recover as a tourist destination until the late 1950s (for obvious historical reasons)

http://folioweekly.com/The-Fake-History-of-St-Augustine,9190

For accuracy, Miami was founded on July 28, 1896. You should also familiarize yourself with Henry B. Plant. He did just as much as Flagler did in developing the state and he also invested and spent time in Jax. He died in 1899 and his railroad company was acquired by the Atlantic Coast Line, soon after, which is probably why some overlook his contribution to the state's development. If you're ever in Tampa and have free time, check out his hotel in downtown. It's pretty impressive. If not, we've included it in several Learning From Tampa articles over the years. You can find some MJ images here: http://photos.metrojacksonville.com/Learning-From/Tampa-2014/46597112_2W5Zz4#!i=3788019341&k=RFb9ThV

Jacksonville (where the state banks were) had determined that the southern florida land boom was a bubble before the crash of the stock market in 1929 and had stopped extending finance to south florida speculators.  By 1928, according to most sites, Jville had 3 million tourists passing through the city

How many tourist were passing through other places? Also, no argument from my end that Jax set itself up as a regional hub for banking and insurance in the second half of your 100 year time frame. However, I recall things being a bit more regional and not as dominant, at least from the persepective of places in the state not located in North Florida. For example, SunBank was pretty big in Central Florida before being merged into SunTrust. I believe Southeast Bank was the big one based out of Miami before being merged into First Union in 2001. Growing up in Central Florida, the only Jax-based bank I remember with a big presence down there was Barnett. However, that time period of growth would fall outside of your 100 year time frame.

Mizener was an architect, but most people refer to the his work as the benchmark of the emergence of a distinctively modern south florida era.

I chose that time period because it accurately describes the time period in which the national rail lines connected with the maritime travel industry in downtown. (1948 was effectively the year in which you couldn't hop directly from a ship onto a train very easily.)  The wharf redevelopments began in earnest in 1952 when Haydon Burns started the old steam ship docks into over water parking lots for the new motorized transportation system. (cars)

Jacksonville was called the Gateway to Florida for a reason, and it kept that distinction until the early 1980s.

It was and still is a Gateway. The state was just a lot more insignificant 100 years ago than it is today.

Im sure you aren't under the impression that everyone who visited south florida during the 6 years of the land boom in the 1920s used monoplanes or speedboats to get there.  All of those people had to stop in the already bustling metropolis (comparative to the rest of Florida) of Jacksonville.

Unless they arrived by boat. Anyway, now we've added another caveat.....comparative to the rest of Florida....as opposed to south outside of New Orleans. This is a more accurate statement. However, Florida wasn't the major metropolis it is today.

Savannah and Charleston both went through long periods of intense economic depression following the civil war, as did most of the secondary southern towns, and their economies never truly came back until after world war 2.

Our economy went down the tubes in the 30s too. Like the others, WWII pulled us out of it.

[thelakelander]

There wasn't much tourism going on statewide in Florida in the 19th century (first half of your time line). Outside of a few North Florida spots, the state was largely undeveloped. Anyway, we've veered enough from the original discussion. I don't feel like changing the debate to discuss Flagler. I'll simply repeat that given the facts we can generate at this point, it's a stretch to say Jacksonville was only second to New Orleans in tourism and vibrancy (southern cities) at any point between the 1860s and 1960s.

We know Miami Beach became an international destination in the 1920s, so without doing much research, we can take out the 1920s - 1960s part of the time line.

We also know that other southern port cities like Memphis and Louisville were key hubs with similar economies as Jax, just on a much larger scale during the 19th century.

Prior to 1900, one could probably make a compelling case for Galveston as well. During the late 1800s, it was known as "the Playground of the South." Heck, even today, it still pulls in over 5 million tourist annually. Like Jax, disaster struck around the turn of the century. Unlike Jax, there was a similar scaled competitor nearby (Houston) that immediately took advantage of Galveston's downfall. We were able to build into a much larger place than we were in the 1800s, but growth also expanded to Central and South Florida due to the expansion of rail lines by Flagler and Plant.

Last, I never said all other cities. I didn't mention Orlando, Charlotte, Raleigh, etc. I only mentioned a few that one could use to poke holes in the belief that Jax was the only second in tourism and urban vibrancy in the south to New Orleans between the 1860s and 1960s. It's local feel good folklore, but it's not historically accurate.