Lost Jacksonville: Sugar Hill

[stjr]

The only historic element left of the Ritz is the corner the sign hangs on.  Everything else is new.

And when the City says corner, they mean it.  It's a teeny weeny corner at that!  Lake was being kind. It's, more bluntly said, a new building with an old sign.  Not what I would call true historic preservation.  But, hey, it is Jax style 

I do think the Ritz Theater's management has done a good job of turning it into a great city asset.  Maybe it, and the original's history, will be a feature in itself on MJ one day.  Was this a haunt of Ray Charles in his day?  Where did he play and where did he live while in Jax?  How about some historic markers and marketing of that fact?

[thelakelander]

The Ritz is one the list this year along with a lot of other places and neighborhoods in the urban core.  From what I understand, the Ritz was not the main theatre in that area during its heyday.  I believe it was the Strand, which was on Ashley Street.  The building where Ray Charles hung out is still "kinda" standing.  Its the building shell on the corner of Jefferson and Ashley Streets.

[stjr]

The building where Ray Charles hung out is still "kinda" standing.  Its the building shell on the corner of Jefferson and Ashley Streets.

Maybe MetroJax could lead a drive for an historic marker and some event marketed around this history.  It would be a great tag line or hook for promoting the downtown area.  If you ever saw the movie, "Ray", you would have to be impressed by his standing in the world of music greats.  Having roots here could be capitalized on like Baltimore and Edgar Allan Poe - or our version of "George Washington Slept Here".

[Ocklawaha]

Interesting Streetcar traces in two of these photos. The photo which says "Davis Street in the 1940's" clearly shows the diamond (crossing) of one line over another. It also proved once and for all that the company DID NOT remove all the track as read in the city streetcar charter agreement.

The second shows a brick 8Th Street at the "S" line crossing. Interesting because the streetcar crossed the Seaboard Railroad at this spot. But the photo clearly shows that the streetcar track wasn't in the street. Those bricks looks like the've been around for a long - long time. What I believe you may have stumbled upon is a rare shot of shortly after the car tracks were lifted from the RIGHT SIDE of the road. Typical Jacksonville Traction off the street running. You might recall the track that ends at Talleyrand was "side of the road" also the track in my photograph of the Kings Road Car Line clearly shows double track and NO SIGN of a road. I suspose the photographer was standing on the pavement when he took the streetcar photo.

Shame that the Laura Street - Monroe - Hogan corridors downtown don't have a few dozen RITZ THEATER type signs.

OCKLAWAHA

[pwhitford]

It chills me to the bone to see what they did to this neighborhood for the sake of I-95.  I was born and raised in The Bronx, whole sections of which were ruthlessly gutted to lay highway miles with the express and callous intent of making it easier for suburbanites to get from their white-flight enclaves on Long Island and in Westchester to “The City” (i.e., the borough of Manhattan which, in reality, is only 1/5th of “The City”).  This is Robert Moses social engineering by urban planning at its despicable best.  To the day she died, my very proper, “lace-curtain Irish” grandmother would turn her head a spit if his name was ever mentioned in her presence.  And he did this all over New York, to the lower part of Manhattan, to Brooklyn, and to the working class sections of Queens; it was unbelievable.  If they had kept only a fraction of the housing stock they lost as a result of this rampage, New York would be a much different and more affordable place to live in today.  This is like an open wound that need to be healed.

[gatorback]

We'll there's always the secondary effect of clearing out the slums...that is what I always heard what happened.  That area was really bad...they just sort of cleaned it out, not unlike what they did downtown.

[civil42806]

We'll there's always the secondary effect of clearing out the slums...that is what I always heard what happened.  That area was really bad...they just sort of cleaned it out, not unlike what they did downtown.

Well maybe so, not that familiar with that area at that time.  Not sure that the folks that were displaced would have agreed.  Sounds like the Lavilla cleansing.  Or going even further back, blacks point being offered up by the government for NAS jax.  The government is always going to go through the path of least resistance and back then it was primarily through minority, african american, communities.  As far as cleaning it out, if you mean building an elevated 4 lane highway, I guess that qualifies.

[thelakelander]

Yeah, they surely cleaned it up...

From stuff like this:




to this:

[thelakelander]

I found a few images of Sugar Hill's original Brewster Hospital being demolished in my archives.  They were taken on May 28, 2005.  This is the site of the proposed VA clinic.  Its too bad the old historic structure could not have been saved and incorporated into the clinic's plans.

[Ocklawaha]

We'll there's always the secondary effect of clearing out the slums...that is what I always heard what happened.  That area was really bad...they just sort of cleaned it out, not unlike what they did downtown.

Well maybe so, not that familiar with that area at that time.  Not sure that the folks that were displaced would have agreed.  Sounds like the Lavilla cleansing.  Or going even further back, blacks point being offered up by the government for NAS jax.  The government is always going to go through the path of least resistance and back then it was primarily through minority, African American, communities.  As far as cleaning it out, if you mean building an elevated 4 lane highway, I guess that qualifies.

Camp Joseph E. Johnston, about 1916 (yes LAKE/LUNICAN I DO have enough info and photos for an article)

Civil, the land at "BLACKS POINT" wasn't "black" per se. I'm from Ortega, and my fathers best friend (born about 1905) was from Blacks Point and was quite a wealthy white man - though he was a self-made business man. The little Baptist Church at the Blacks Point community served the troops at the tiny Florida National Guard post called Camp Joseph E. Johnston (CSA General - Army of Tennessee) Both the camp and the community coexisted. Radical expansion during WWI brought about the land purchase in what is "MAINSIDE" at the NAS JAX base today, but it was still incomplete and all Florida Guard with Army Units in training. After the war, the War Department (today's Dept of Defense) greatly expanded the boundary's and changed the name to CAMP FOSTER - US ARMY. The little white frame church was moved from Blacks Point about 1.2 miles west into Dewey Park - AKA YUKON, FLORIDA. (The church still stands in this ghost town just off the end of the runway at NAS and Roosevelt, and across the tracks, go ONE BLOCK on the left... BTW the seafood place is GREAT). When WWII broke out the Navy had a huge plot of land that made up the Western and Southwestern half of Clay County. They didn't want to be landlocked and the State didn't want to see so much land eaten up for post war planning purposes. A deal was worked out where the camp was swapped. The ARMY took CAMP BLANDING and the NAVY got Camp Foster which today is NAS JAX. NAS JAX became a master base, O&R center for the Naval Aviation Wings and Aviation Tech School, something that continues to expand today. The Army cut a 3 way deal at Blanding with the State and Navy, they took the South and Southwest half of the property and developed a jungle or forrest warfare school, tank and gun range, aerial bomb range, Special forces school, POW CAMP (Germans - Italians) and a complete railroad system. The State got the Northern half of the base land for the State Forrest. After the war the Army pulled the plug and left this giant base to the Florida National Guard once again... But as of the last 20 years, Camp Blanding has roared back to life and is now a class 2? full military base with active duty Army units there almost all the time. This includes goodies like a nice PX, recreation facilities etc. The tiny black community where many of my childhood friends lived was between Ortega Hills and Yukon just to the south of the new office/warehouse park that is being developed across from the main gate of NAS. At one time 1950-60 there was even a village store out there where we used to buy cola's. Today the dirt roads are blocked and I suppose most of the black community no longer exists, sad as there is also a good size cemetery hidden in those woods.


Camp Foster at Blacks Point, shows many more trees cleared and many new quickie buildings.

The weirdest thing about cleaning up the neighborhood came from Starke, where the Camp Blanding Soldiers would take leave, liberty or spend a lazy day of R&R. The Black community of Starke was between the base and the town proper. The POW trustee's, that is to say NAZI SS OFFICERS, GESTAPO, VERMACHT, LUFTWAFFEN etc... who minded their manners could earn a pass to the local dance halls, bars or theaters. The American born African American CITIZENS were not allowed in those businesses... HOW IS THAT FOR CLEANSING? 

OCKLAWAHA
"The Ancient One..."

[gatorback]

Oh, so this wasn't one of those projects.

The shift of population to the suburbs had begun taking its toll on cities. The automobile had made possible "the outward transfer of the homes of citizens with adequate income from the inner city to the suburbs," with narrow city roads used to convey "these citizens daily back and forth to their city offices and places of business."

"The former homes of the transferred population have descended by stages to lower and lower income groups, and some of them ... have now run the entire gamut. Almost untenable, occupied by the humblest citizens, they fringe the business district and form the city's slums -- a blight near its very core!" wrote Fairbank.

The once proud tenements were in collapse, were taken over by the cities for unpaid taxes, and were sometimes replaced by parking lots. "And now, the Federal Government is beginning to acquire them in batches in connection with its slum-clearance projects."

http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/septoct00/urban.htm

[heights unknown]

There were three theatres in the Lavilla/Sugar Hill area back then; the Ritz, the Strand, and the Roosevelt.  The Roosevelt was in the 800 block of Ashley two blocks north of where my Mom and I lived in the 800 block of Duval.  The strand was further east on Ashley closer to downtown.  The Strand was known for its extremely salty popcorn.  The Roosevelt used to give out prizes from bottle tops and it cost a quarter to get in back in the mid 60's.

The other theatre was the center Theater downtown where blacks would go, but whites went there also; the blacks would sit in the upper section, and the whites in the lower section.

Heights Unknown

[heights unknown]

I was born in the old Brewster Hospital near Jefferson Street.  Don't remember anything about it though; but I know on my birth certificate it has Brewster Methodist Hospital.

Heights Unknown

[Coolyfett]

When I first reading this I kept thinking "sugarhill?" "what is that" then the all too familiar words popped up....BLODGETT PROJECTS!!! I remember the old ones vividly!!! Now that was a rough neighbor. I remember my mom sending me and my lil brother to spend the night with some kids that went to church with us....and these 2 women were fighting in the apartment street. One stabbed the other pretty badly. My mom came and got us that morning like 4 am. That was one of my first memories of seeing people behave in such a wild way. It had to be 87, 88. Blodgett Projects and Gregory West on Gregory Drive were some of the worst places in Jacksonville. The city tears them down and they just go an create another bad area like Cleveland Arms and Eureaka Gardens. A lot of people in on the Westside lost their homes to the completion of I10 & I295 just like what happened in this Sugarhill area. Hell you can go in Riverside and see streets that are divided due to the expressway. Makes me wonder if anyone lost their home when the Buckmen was being built.

[grifray]

Has been nice to follow the posts here on various planning and architectural historical narratives in Jax - thanks! Just a few historical and land use comments...
The Tennis Courts at Emmett Reed have been built (it seems) on one of the 3 EPA designated "Jax Ash Sites" - solid waste incinerators and dumps that operated between the turn of the century and the 1940s, this one known as the 5th and Cleveland Incinerator Site. It's only one of at least 8 such sites within the general area. So when we talk about something being "lost" in Jax, especially when it concerns this specific geography, it's always good to keep in mind that this area was already considered expendable.
Also, the (now) Guinyard Pool has been described, at least by one historian, as a "reward" for the area for its residents not electing Wilson Armstrong, a black union carpenter who was red-baited and denigrated as an uneducated working man, in 1947. Claude Smith was elected instead, the guy who would later be convicted of accepting bribes in 1966.
Able Bartley's book "Keeping the Faith" (second link above is to a review of this book) and Paul Ortiz's "Emancipation Betrayed" are good historical accounts of Jax and race relations, which has played no small part in how the city is shaped.