A Blast From The Past: 1990s Downtown Jacksonville
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Downtown Jacksonville has come a long way over the last twenty years. Today, we go back in time and take a look at the streets of Downtown's Northbank during the early 1990s.
Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2015-feb-a-blast-from-the-past-1990s-downtown-jacksonville-
Very nice.
Hmmm, I actually saw a lot of loss in those pictures. Many of the in use buildings are now empty, many others are simply gone and not much of better value , if anything, replaced them. And a couple of empty buildings just now being re-purposed. Was the "has come a long way" a bit tongue and cheek?
This is the downtown I vividly remember growing up.
My dad and I would regularly go to the downtown library after school (across from Burrito Gallery that is now being converted into a non-profit center by the Jesse Ball duPont Fund). The trip always included a trip to the Wendy's Super Bar (Super Bar was the buffet Wendys had with pasta, tacos, burritos and salads), pictured on the bottom left here. Dad knew the guy that ran the Army/Navy Surplus Store (the old Rhodes Furniture building pictured), and I remember sneaking up into the upper floors (many of which were rotted and had gaping holes in them) to test my luck at not falling to my death... which somehow seemed fun at the time.
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Would be nice to find some pictures of the downstairs of the Landing during this time as well. Saturdays consisted of dad yucking it up at Hooters, live music in the courtyard (I remember seeing Charlie Daniels play quite a bit), getting a cup of banana froyo from Everything Yogurt, watching fudge being made at the Fudgery, either grabbing tacos at Tacos Amigos or getting a mozeralla Lubi from Lubis, playing with expensive gadgets from Sharper Image, buying cassette tapes from Musicland with money earned mowing yards and staring at the live swimsuit models in the window at Aqua East Surf Shop.
Power 95 used to do a lot of free concerts at Metro Park and there seemed to have always been events going on at the Southbank Riverwalk.
The riverfront always seemed to be active between the Landing and the places on the other side of the river (Crawdaddys, Harbormasters and there used to be a lot of retail shops along the riverwalk where the Wyndham is today)... but the core always seemed completely dead.
Quote from: strider on February 23, 2015, 08:02:44 AM
Hmmm, I actually saw a lot of loss in those pictures. Many of the in use buildings are now empty, many others are simply gone and not much of better value , if anything, replaced them. And a couple of empty buildings just now being re-purposed. Was the "has come a long way" a bit tongue and cheek?
I was looking at this and was thinking we're in better shape now than back then. Maybe because I have things like the shipyards and the Barnett on my mind. There are a lot of buildings that are gone in those photos though :(
The most amazing thing to me is that the Marble Bank building was fully occupied and recently renovated in the '90's, yet it has deteriorated to the condition it is in now.
I remember being there with a friend the morning the old Rhodes Furniture building was demolished. Kind of a weird feeling afterwards.
There's definitely more going on downtown than there was in the 90s, in some places, but the Southbank Riverwalk seems like more of a dead zone than it ever was back then.
Thanks for the pictures - the 90s (1990 to be precise) was the first time I came downtown.
Quick question: Do you also have pictures for the are towards the greyhound station / Prime Osborn ? The pics in this artice confirm my memories as to there being more in dt than now. The thing I am still not sure about is the area surrounding Prime Osborn - I think I remember that there used to be lots of cool old warehouses around the station but also many smaller store-type buidings on the way there but there seems to be pretty much nothing there now.
Quote from: Gunnar on February 23, 2015, 01:28:47 PM
Thanks for the pictures - the 90s (1990 to be precise) was the first time I came downtown.
Quick question: Do you also have pictures for the are towards the greyhound station / Prime Osborn ? The pics in this artice confirm my memories as to there being more in dt than now. The thing I am still not sure about is the area surrounding Prime Osborn - I think I remember that there used to be lots of cool old warehouses around the station but also many smaller store-type buidings on the way there but there seems to be pretty much nothing there now.
These are dated 1987.
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Not La Villa, but an interesting shot of Brooklyn. This is where Brooklyn Station is being built today (Fresh Market shopping center). I remember that Popeyes billboard distinctly.
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Here you can see the building that was demolished in between Haskell and the YMCA (most of the foundation still stands today) as well as the land where the St Joe Company (now Raymond James Building) and Everbank/Harden Associates building are now constructed. Notice, you won't see the Northbank Riverwalk in this picture either. That wasn't constructed until the mid 2000's.
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Gunner, the area you're thinking about was known as Railroad Row. Most of it was demolished along with LaVilla during the mid to late 1990s.
Thanks lake and field. So I did remember correctly. Came through this area when going from Riverside to downton (also arrived at the Greyhound station a few times) and always thought how cool it would be to convert these warehouses into lofts. When I went trough there a couple of years later I thought I must have confused that with another part of town...memories from that time were sometimes a bit hazy ;-)
Doesn't seem t be much left.
A picture of Adams Street, in the vicinity of present day Burrito Gallery, a few decades before the 1990s.
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Don't forget the strip joints, late 70's early to mid 80's I believe.
Quote from: Gunnar on February 23, 2015, 01:28:47 PM
Thanks for the pictures - the 90s (1990 to be precise)......
Number 13 is the Civic Auditorium under renovation and was shot in 1995. The cut through the exhibition hall would later become the Jacoby shoebox style concert hall in the Times Union Performing Arts Center.
Quote from: stephendare on February 23, 2015, 10:52:05 AM
Quote from: Bativac on February 23, 2015, 10:28:32 AM
I remember being there with a friend the morning the old Rhodes Furniture building was demolished. Kind of a weird feeling afterwards.
There's definitely more going on downtown than there was in the 90s, in some places, but the Southbank Riverwalk seems like more of a dead zone than it ever was back then.
Actually its the opposite. I lived just on the other side of the Rhodes building from the point of view of the picture taken on Duval Street in 1990. Downtown was in the middle of a great die off then, but it was about five times more lively than it is now during the day.
The night life has improved somewhat, but at the time you had Milk Bar, Netherworld, The French Quarter and a bunch of places to go to. There were a lot of illegal late night bottle clubs downtown during the late 80s/early 90s and Five Points hadn't happened yet.
I was a kid then, in middle school and high school, so I never experienced downtown during the work day... just on the afternoon and weekends. I remember absolutely nothing happening - a friend of mine thought it was funny to lay in the middle of the road and see how long it took for a car to nearly flatten him. He'd get up from boredom before he was in any danger.
The southbank riverwalk used to have some kind of little food joints - ice cream, hot dogs, Crawdaddy's, places like that - and now it's like nothing (though the residential buildings have been a huge improvement over there).
My memories are about the same. When I was a kid my mom would take us down there all the time to have lunch with my dad. My most vivid memories were the Landing and later, walking on the Riverwalks and taking the Skyway to nowhere in particular. Off the river there never was much going on unless there was an event of some kind. I think the biggest change between then and now is that now there are people who really want to go downtown. I can remember hearing one Southpoint bigwig actually saying that "Downtown Jacksonville" didn't exist, that our "real" downtown was the Southside.
Nice. I love the "decades before" photo. I tell anyone who will listen about how Jacksonville actually had a core downtown in the 50/60/70's. I remember being a kid and going to the downtown Sears, and the hotels.. the Robert Meyer. And gasp, there were record stores! My mom worked at Hoyt's which was downtown then.
Thanks First Baptist Church, for making sure that downtown Jacksonville will forever be deserted.
Today I came across a 1980s photo album of downtown and LaVilla. It's pretty depressing that we completely ripped down LaVilla. Even in blight, it was beautiful. I ended up scanning a good chunk of those images to share on Metro Jacksonville. Expect to see a "Last Days of LaVilla" photo article this upcoming week. In the meantime, here's a shot of West Forsyth Street in 1987. Without the Southern Bell Building (EverBank Center) in the background, you would never know that this scene was Jacksonville's LaVilla of yesteryear.
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Two more shots...
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Residential building density....
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Davis Street, near the Ritz Theatre....
Wow what an amazing collection! When I filmed in LaVilla back in November, I had a sense there were some great places that had been there.