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QuoteLaVilla - A Lost Legacy
For former residents, strong memories live in empty lots
Revitalization 'bittersweet'
By Nicole McGill and Joan Hennessy
Times-Union staff writers
Sandwiched between a uniform shop and an old, red brick church is a narrow vacant lot easily overlooked by passers-by zooming down a palm tree-lined entryway to downtown Jacksonville.
Vacant lots are not unusual in LaVilla. That's mostly what's there, and the one between the church and shop looks no different.
But for one family, that patch of grass and weeds is a reminder of a father whose death a decade ago is still grieved, of a bygone era when children shot marbles in the street and neighbors sat on their porches into the evening, of a time and a neighborhood now vanished.
Like many vacant lots in LaVilla, it has a story to tell.
LaVilla is gone. Its dilapidated buildings were knocked down and plowed over as the city made way for a new era. Its residents moved to other neighborhoods on the eve of renaissance.
The past
Emily Crum, 72, drives by that vacant lot sometimes two or three times a week.
Memories of her father are there in the empty space once filled with a rambling eight-bedroom house.
The house was an extension of her father, Simuel ''Sam'' Cohen. It was a symbolic center of the family.
Cohen, father of seven, moved from Woodbine, Ga., to Jacksonville in the mid-1940s. A widower, he lost one child in Georgia, a boy who died of pneumonia at 17.
Cohen settled in LaVilla and rented a house on West Monroe Street. It was next to land his family eventually bought and used to operate a filling station.
In 1948, he bought a house across the street at 835 W. Monroe St., nestled between his church, Greater Hills Temple First Born Church of the Living God, and a building that housed a grocery, barber shop and cafe.
A parlor with a piano, a huge kitchen, three bedrooms and a bathroom filled the first floor of the house. Five more bedrooms and a bathroom were upstairs, plenty of room for Cohen's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who in later years would fill his home for family gatherings.
''My father married a woman from LaVilla: Maria Cohen,'' Crum said. ''She was living across the street. She was a good cook and ran a boarding house.''
The LaVilla that Cohen embraced was a place to start over. In a time of segregation, it offered hope and opportunity for blacks, as it had for Greek and Jewish immigrants around the turn of the century.
There were black-owned restaurants, grocery stores, dry cleaners and rooming houses for working men who needed a good meal and a warm bed.
Kids played marbles in the street. They'd set up makeshift boxing rings and stage contests.
''It would be two hours before an automobile would pass,'' remembered Sam Cohen's son Samuel Cohen, a 66-year-old bishop in the First Born Church of the Living God, a Pentecostal denomination.
There were nightclubs such as the Strand, the Frolic and the Knights of Pythias building where legends such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway and Billie Holiday once played. Kids could see a movie at the Ritz for less than a quarter.
The Cohen boys scampered down to the Ritz whenever they could. They shined shoes for 10 cents (a small-business venture their dad knew nothing about) and used the earnings to get into the movies.
photo: dsfamily
A crew from Burkhalter Wrecking, Inc. reduces a block of houses to splinters as they continue demolitions in the 700 block between West Union St. and West Beaver St. in La Villa.
-- Bob Self/staff
Their father, meanwhile, became a businessman who delivered wood in the winter and ice in the days before electric refrigeration.
Two of Cohen's daughters, Emily and Naomi, were out on their own. Alfredia, the youngest, lived with Naomi and her husband. But Alfredia visited her dad on the weekends and sat in the office of his business, answering the phone and pretending to be his secretary. ''It wasn't a fancy childhood,'' she said, ''but it was a happy one.''
Cohen's sons, Earl, Herbert and Samuel, - and later his grandsons - were nearby.
On Friday evenings, the family would gather at the filling station.
''It was an unspoken agreement,'' said Tripp, who is in her late 50s. ''It was like our Friday evening leisure time. We had fish fries. My sister would parch peanuts. Our children would come and meet, too. We drank peach sodas. He [her father] and I would share one. Emily would bake a cake.
''Our father would tell stories about our natural mother. He'd talk about when he was a little boy. I used to love those stories.''
Everybody called Cohen ''Deac'' because he was chairman of the deacon board, superintendent of the Sunday school and church treasurer.
''My dad was a kind of strict man. He kept us in church,'' said Herbert Cohen, 68, a junior bishop and pastor of Zion Temple First Born Church of the Living God on Phoenix Avenue. As a child, he thought, ''Lord, when I get grown, I'm not going to see no church.''
He paused, looking around the office of his Northside church. ''And here I am.''
Standing his ground
The house, the church and the business were the center of Sam Cohen's world. And it was from there that he and his family watched the world change.
Desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s opened opportunities for black people in LaVilla. Those who could afford to move did, taking with them the stability and work ethic that had kept the community alive.
''Young people chose not to live there, or they didn't want to take care of it anymore,'' Tripp said.
Her brother Herbert Cohen agreed.
''[Property] owners died, and their children started renting out the rooms,'' he said. The new residents of LaVilla were transient, poor people who rented rooms by the week.
The neighborhood devolved from a place of opportunity to a pocket of opportunists, drug dealers and prostitutes.
But Sam Cohen, like other longtime LaVilla residents, stood his ground.
In the last years of his life, Sam Cohen was on West Monroe Street one day when a teenager pushed him against the side of his house and stole his wallet.
His children feared for him, but they knew he would never leave LaVilla.
''I kind of think he liked it because he could come out his steps and then walk up the church steps,'' said Naomi Turner, 75. ''We tried to get him to move someplace better.''
He wanted to live in his house. And he died there in August 1988 at the age of 89.
He left behind six children, numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren and a widow, his third wife, Rosetta Cohen. Maria Cohen had died 10 years after they were married.
Rosetta Cohen stayed in the house about a year or so, took on a few boarders, but eventually moved to a nursing home, where she still lives today.
Walls tumble
Most of the Cohen children didn't watch when the house was torn down in 1995.
''I didn't want to see it go down,'' Crum said of the day her father's house was demolished. ''I went around the corner. I couldn't watch it. He had a lot of memories there. I loved my father.''
Herbert Cohen said he thinks his father would be hurt to see LaVilla the way it looks today.
''He was one of the leaders there. If you wanted something decent and right, see Deacon Cohen,'' Herbert Cohen said. ''It hurts to go back there.''
The only family member who watched was Sam Cohen's youngest son, Earl Cohen, 64. But he too had strong feelings. The demolition took away more than just an old house, he said.
There was something about the place, something intangible: ''the peace that was in it for my dad.''
QuoteRevitalization 'bittersweet'
LaVilla - A Lost Legacy
By Nicole McGill and Joan Hennessy
Times-Union staff writers
Long after Leroy and Veronica Green settled into a neat white cottage on the Northside, memories of their days renting in LaVilla lingered.
''[After a storm,] I would step off my porch and be knee-deep in water,'' Leroy Green said.
For the Greens, moving away was a good thing. They were able to buy a house with a $5,850 down payment, a housing supplement from the city of Jacksonville offered because the Greens were displaced during redevelopment in LaVilla.
Still, Leroy Green has mixed emotions about LaVilla development. He said since residents moved away, the city has done impressive work on the streets and drainage of LaVilla. And he wonders why the city couldn't have upgraded while residents were there.
Since 1993, the city has spent $6.5 million in consultant and environmental remediation and $4.5 million in demolition, road building, infrastructure and asbestos abatement in LaVilla. Adding in the cost to acquire property and move out residents, the city has spent $27.7 million in LaVilla.
The city's work is part of River City Renaissance, a sometimes-controversial effort to reinvigorate the troubled downtown. The city is attempting to market LaVilla land purchased from landowners to private business, thereby getting the property back on tax rolls.
River City Renaissance transformed LaVilla from a pocket of poverty with run-down houses, to acres of grass, tended to by city workers that Jacksonville Public Works director, Sam Mousa, calls his ''rangers.''
At a meeting earlier this year, Mousa reported that 29 percent of the properties were used for public purposes, and about 6 percent have been set aside for stormwater control. Private development has claimed 17 percent, but 48 percent of the properties has not been developed.
Green said the sidewalks and roadways have been improved on the main thoroughfares.
''They didn't care about sidewalks when the people lived there,'' he said. ''And there's not a drop of water anywhere, no matter how much it rains.''
Mousa said the city did not neglect LaVilla while people lived there. ''There's poor drainage in many areas of the county. Not fixing drainage was not specific to LaVilla.''
But could this effort have come earlier?
''Let's not forget that not everybody can live in a mansion,'' Mousa said. ''LaVilla was loaded with drugs and prostitutes. There wasn't much desire or much need to spruce up the area. It wasn't a very good entranceway to the city.''
But whether the city did the right thing by plowing down LaVilla's old homes is a matter pondered by Jacksonville City Councilman Warren Jones.
''I guess the revitalization of LaVilla is a bittersweet effort,'' he said.
As a boy, Jones lived in LaVilla, walked to kindergarten and went to movies there.
If revitalization had started 20 years ago, LaVilla might have been saved, Jones observed.
When city representatives offered to buy LaVilla property and relocate renters, most of its residents and property owners took the money.
The city paid $31,000 plus relocation fees for occupants for a house on Monroe Street owned by the children of the late Simuel ''Sam'' Cohen, said Pat Brown, chief of the Public Works Department's Real Estate Division. Property with a filling station and an adjacent lot were purchased from family members for $42,600 plus relocation fees. In both cases, the property was either appraised or assessed for slightly less than the city paid.
''We paid fairly,'' Mousa said, adding that the city complied with federal laws in relocating residents. ''No one objected to taking our money.''
Green said he thinks LaVilla's demolition was strictly about making more money for the city and creating a positive image for businesses, tourists and football fans.
LaVilla residents were ''throwaway people,'' Green said. ''When big money moves in, I don't care where it is . . . you're either in or out.''
Green said some people think LaVilla was a target because it was a predominantly black community. He disagrees.
''Business has no color,'' said Green, an African-American.
What a story. I grew up in Lavilla as I have mentioned in previous posts in other threads relating to that section of town.
I was raised by my Grandmother up to about age 8 when my Mother came and got me to live with her in Jacksonville; she lived at 817 West Duval Street; before that she lived at 826 West Adams Street, so she was a "LaVilla Resident" for the entire time (1959 - 1967) she lived in Jacksonville.
She didn't live in a house but it was a large room in one of the 2 story boarding houses. Back then those rundown two story houses were in great shape, and my Mother's room was no exception. It had beautiful wallpaper and she had it well furnished for the time (early to mid 60's). There were about 3 to 4 families on the first floor of the boarding house, and two more families on the second floor, and yes, they all lived in one of the large rooms, no house, no apartment, a large room. We all had to share the one bathroom on that floor (community bath), but always kept it neat and clean for the next person or family.
Lavilla in those days was awash with activity. In the opening post you mention kids going to the Ritz Theater to see a movie; in all actuality there were three movie theaters in the LaVilla Neighborhood, the Ritz, the Strand, and the Roosevelt. In addition there were numerous nightclubs, bars stores, and restaurants in LaVilla, mostly on Ashley and Davis Streets. Throughout the afternoon and on into the evening and night, you could hear music from the juke boxes in over 10 or more different bars and nightclubs, and there were people everywhere, some just standing around talking and conversing, others walking on their way to wherever, and people always sitting on the porches of the two story boarding houses watching the action and the activity. Kids were everywhere playing in front of the boarding houses, in the streets, etc. The only streets that had a lot of car traffic were Davis, Ashley, State and Union Streets.
During the time we lived in LaVilla, I attended 4th and 5th grades at A. L. Lewis Elementary, which was right behind the post office on Beaver Street across from Lavilla Park. I never took a bus to school, I always walked. It took me less than 10 minutes to walk to school. The children in LaVilla did not take a bus, they walked; A. L. Lewis was slightly less than a mile from our house so it didn't take long to get to school, and, back then people didn't bother you as much so parents were not that worried about child molestation, etc.
I have vivid memories of LaVilla. My Mother came and got me from my Grandmother in the Spring of 1965. Jacksonville was a hustling, bustling city in those days, the crown jewel of Florida if you will, and downtown always had something going on and was the place to shop, eat, and relax, no empty parking lots back in the day. We lived in LaVilla in Jax for about 3 years and my Mother moved us, in late 1967 to Fort Myers. I cried when we left Jacksonville. I was a country boy when I arrived (lived in Jasper, FL with Grandmother), but was cityized by the time we left and had developed a special place in my heart for "Big Jax" as my Grandmother called it.
I will never give up on Jax, despite the idiocy of her leaders. LaVilla is only one of the huge problems and mistakes relative to it's decline, deterioration and then disappearance that Jax has made. What Jax has left I hope the leaders have the vision to capitalize and improve on what's left and not continue to destroy our heritage. Hope everyone enjoyed this tidbit about my time in LaVilla.
Heights Unknown
I definitely enjoy your LaVilla stories. Where exactly was LaVilla Park located? I wonder what happened to it?
It was right across from A. L. Lewis Elementary School (which no longer exists), but where A. L. Lewis was was directly behind what is now the big Post Office on Beaver; that was a long time ago and I don't remember the street names, but it was somewhere behind what is not the United States Postal Service on Beaver Street.
Heights Unknown
Heights thanks for sharing this tidbit on LaVilla. Excellent history, your history, my history, OUR HISTORY. If good folks like you don't step up and share our past with our youth, no one will understand where we come from, who we are, and thus where we are going. The only thing new in this world is history that you don't know. Great story man.
OCKLAWAHA
Quote from: Ocklawaha on June 20, 2009, 02:46:42 PM
Heights thanks for sharing this tidbit on LaVilla. Excellent history, your history, my history, OUR HISTORY. If good folks like you don't step up and share our past with our youth, no one will understand where we come from, who we are, and thus where we are going. The only thing new in this world is history that you don't know. Great story man.
OCKLAWAHA
Thanks "Ock," and I always enjoy your inputs and tidbits because you always, without fail, give great "to the point" and factual info, and without fail, tell it like it is. Thanks again.
Heights Unknown
Quote from: thelakelander on June 20, 2009, 10:39:50 AM
I definitely enjoy your LaVilla stories. Where exactly was LaVilla Park located? I wonder what happened to it?
Lakelander; where Lavilla Park was the Park's name has been changed to Florida C. Dwight Park and it is on Eaverson Street south of Beaver past I-95 going West on Beaver; I think the construction of the big Post Office on Beaver changed a lot of things in that area. But that is where Lavilla Park was.
Heights Unknown
Heights, thank you so much for your memories. That must have been something back then.
Quote from: sheclown on June 21, 2009, 08:54:30 AM
Heights, thank you so much for your memories. That must have been something back then.
I was a child, and to me in those days, it was totally "off the chain," and I didn't understand most of it...but I do now!
Heights Unknown