Cool Old Photo

[Ocklawaha]

This photo just found by a member in some files in Indiana! Note the vehicles, as late as 1930, horses and mules greatly outnumbered automobiles in the city.

OCKLAWAHA

[Garden guy]

Now that's a beautiful building

[downtownjag]

Is that 11E?

[thelakelander]

That's Klutho's Seminole Hotel.  It was on the SE corner of Forsyth and Hogan.  It and the Heard Bank Building were torn down for a surface parking lot.  The BOA tower was later built on top of that surface lot.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

for all of you design students and architect grads, how does it make you feel that the prairie style is all but non-existant these days.  the window details.  the ornate cornices.   every brick had purpose and every relief was a work of art.  these days no one actually focuses on the details.  trades included.  i am a youngster following the lost art of millwork that has built several pieces of furniture without the help of a nail, but am dumbfounded when I get questioned by a cabinet maker that only knows how to program his CNC and doesn't know what a castle mortise is. 

Buddy.  I've kept up with technology, not only can I can download my cabinet vision drawings into your machine and take your job, but I can draw it on ACAD or by hand and then turn around a build it before you're done programiing, which do you prefer (vellum is a bit before my time).  Can you build me a rocking chair with out using a screw or a staple?  Do you even know what a mortise and tenon joint is?  Please tell me what a bookmatched set of veneers looks like.

I'm not even 40 yet, and I feel really old.  There are so many people entering my trade that only know x,y,z parameters and don't have an f'ing clue how the grain of the wood affect the finished product. 

Back to my main point, do the one's of you on this site that grew up having to KNOW the difference between something beautiful and something that mimics beautiful - do you grow upset with the newbies coming out?  I do.

[Ocklawaha]

Its not completely dead, this is the NEW Amtrak station at the Milwaukee Airport.









Now take a look at the uninspiring warehouse/barn architecture on the monstrosity that FDOT and JTA have come up with for Jacksonville.



Someone get a bucket, I think I'm gonna be sick.


OCKLAWAHA

[Bativac]

Monstrosity is right. It looks like the courthouse people were involved. The three Bs of design: big, bland, and bloated.

It looks like an outlet mall...

[Wacca Pilatka]

There's a modern prairie-inspired house at the beaches that's highlighted in the book "Beautiful Homes of Jacksonville."

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

http://www.folioweekly.com/documents/folio0712wkl007.pdf

Court of Public Opinion
It’s almost done, but it ain’t pretty: Architectural
verdicts on the new county courthouse

The Duval County Courthouse won’t be
completed until May 2012, but it has already
moved onto Jacksonville’s urban streetscape and
sat down, a massive beige concrete behemoth
that covers three city blocks.  i s horizontal
bully looms into view for motorists as soon as
they exit I-95 North into downtown, and while
driving east on West Forsyth, side street a… er
side street appears to run directly into it.
So, the courthouse is here, a… er 11 years
and $350 million. A diÅ  cult birth, to be sure,
and one that has produced what can only be
described as an ugly baby.  e dimensions
harken to the McMansion era, with Colonial
Revival columns stretched several stories to
form an entranceway, a decorative pediment,
even an interior Å' berglass dome.  e new
Duval County Courthouse encompasses
800,000 square feet of space, and will house
51 courtrooms and 64 judges’ chambers â€"
about double the number of courtrooms at the
current courthouse.
It is massive, yet nondescript, and in
that respect, Å' ts in quite nicely amid the
architectural morass downtown.  o ugh the
city has few standout buildings â€" among
them Taylor Hardwick’s old Haydon Burns
Library and Welton Becket’s Gulf-Life Tower
(now Riverside Tower) â€" Jacksonville’s
architecture rež ects the dominance and
conservatism of the insurance industry â€" the
Aetna Building, Prudential Plaza, the old
Independent Life building (the former Modis
building) â€" as well as the preponderance
of parking garages.  e concrete-colored
palette is so ubiquitous that local architects
have given it a name. Mike Kleinschmidt, a
principal in the Design Cooperative LLC, calls
it “Jacksonville beige.”
Indeed, the new courthouse made generous
use of concrete â€" 50,000 cubic yards (courtesy
of Gate Precast, the ex-mayor’s dad’s company,
which won the contract). It’s one of Å' ve
signature buildings in the Better Jacksonville
Plan, and it’s easily the most troubled. Many
area residents are just happy to see the damn
thing Å' nally built. But the cost compromises
and the conž icting desires of the building’s
future occupants forced KBJ Architects, Inc. to
make some aesthetic concessions.
Glen Dasher, of Dasher Hurst Architects,
says it’s his understanding that the county
judges had very deÅ' nite ideas about what
they wanted in a courthouse: a serious,
imposing building that took its cues from
Colonial architecture. But because building
a true Colonial-style building would require
expensive materials, he thinks they wound
up with a sorry compromise. “I think it
says something about the community of
Jacksonville,” says Dasher, “whether everyone
would agree with that or not.”
Folio Weekly took a tour of the building
last week, accompanied by the city’s liaison
for the project, David Schneider, Jacksonville
Public Information OÅ  cer Kristen Beach,
and Turner Construction Project Manager
Margaret Simone. Unlike the new main library,
which features a soaring staircase that’s more
aesthetic than practical, the courthouse was
designed to serve a function.  e three-story
glass entranceway from Monroe Street is
where visitors will be processed through six
security stations.  e ceiling then drops to one
story as visitors face a bank of elevators and
a one-story staircase that rises through the
center of the building.  e Å' rst ž oor will house
the clerk of the courts, a law library and places
to pay traÅ  c and court Å' nes.  e second
through sixth stories are courtrooms, and the
seventh  oor holds the judges’ chambers.
e
glassed-in eighth story holds all the building’s
mechanical machinations.
For the interior, the city cut costs using
marbleized tile for the walls and  oors, in lieu
of real marble. In each courtroom, the judge’s
bench is made from an acrylic polymer similar
to a Corian countertop colored to look like
black granite.
“
e thing that struck me about the
building, that sticks out, is that it’s loaded with
cosmetics and super cial ornamentation,”
says Richard Shieldhouse, a local architectural
advocate who recently completed his doctorate
in design, construction and planning at the
University of Florida. “When I look at this
building, all I see is a bunch of jewelry. It’s not
an honest building in that sense.”

e re’s no ignoring the  nancial
constraints faced by architects.
e
courthouse became a symbol of government
mismanagement and out-of-control costs
long before it ever broke ground.
e public
blamed Mayor John Peyton, even though the
original  awed cost estimates of $190 million
dated to the Delaney Administration. As
projected costs exceeded $300 million, Peyton
pulled the plug on the project and started
over.
e  nal price tag, which includes
related expenses like relocating the State
Attorney’s O’ ce at the old federal courthouse
as well as security measures, is $350 million.
Wayne Wood, author of “Jacksonville’s
Architectural Heritage,” founder of Riverside
Avondale Preservation and the Riverside
Arts Market, calls the new building “a lost
opportunity. … Why not build a building
that is simply incredible instead of building
a cloying modern claptrap that is trying to
look like something that it is not and will
never be?”
Perhaps the most scathing critique
comes from David La tte, senior architect
at Reynolds, Smith and Hills, Inc. and a
lighting expert who designed the lighting
for Jacksonville’s four bridges. He says the
courthouse is “the most pretentious, delusionsof-
grandeur-on-a-budget colossus we have
ever been presented with in Jacksonville,”
calling it “utterly lacking in the subtleties and
re nements of true classical designs,” and
adding that the precast concrete columns have
“all the sophistication of an empty cardboard
carpet tube.”
“It’s hard to believe anything could be worse
than the ‘Skyway Express’ structures,” La tte
says, “but here it is. We’ll be apologizing for this
for years to come.”
Area architects are quick to concede that the
project Mayor Peyton o› en called “snakebit”
wasn’t any designer’s dream job. “It’s very easy
for me to pick on things,” says Dasher, who
nonetheless describes it as “a cross between a
courthouse and an o’ ce building” and says he’s
sorry to see an opportunity squandered. “For
the amount of money spent, it would have been
good for it to have been a better statement for
Jacksonville,” he says. “
i s gets to look more
like the rest of Jacksonville. You just drive by it,
and it’s just big.” 
Susan Cooper Eastman
sceastman@folioweekly.com

[fsujax]

one of the true great pieces of history lost! Ock, i also agree with you on that JRTC pic. The architecture is horrible!

[Dog Walker]

Ock, By the look of the cars in that first picture it was taken in the early twenties or late teens.

A lot of our earlier buildings have some amazing detail work on them, even the modest apartment buildings here in Riverside.  While walking the dogs I have been admiring some of the intricate, decorative brick work on most of the buildings and wondering if the architect put in those details or was it the master masons who were showing off their skills.

Maybe I'll put up a photo essay here if anyone is interested.

[JaxNative68]

DW: I'm sure the architect depicted the details, but without actually detailing it.  Back then, skilled labor and pride in workmanship was alive and well.  I'm sure the architect trusted the mason's abilities and even possibly discussed/directed the detailing on site while the building was under construction.  Unlike today's quantity over quality contractors, change orders weren't a guaranteed levee on the owner of the project.  I was looking a set of original drawings for one Jacksonville's historic buildings (built in 1926) and I was amazed at the minimal number of sheets it took to get it built (26 architecture & engineering combine).  All of the intent of the design was shown, but without specifically detailing everything.  Compare the drawings to the existing building... and everything is there.  The comparison is interesting, because you can see where the craftsman took his liberties, but didn't cut corners.  And I sure there weren't hundreds of RFI's and a 20% increase in budget due to change orders.

NRW: "I'm not even 40 yet, and I feel really old.  There are so many people entering my trade that only know x,y,z parameters..."

I am over forty and I feel really, really old when dealing with the newbies entering my trade.  They understand how to design, and how to input information into the computer, but they don't understand the value of line weights and the art of putting together a correctly drawn set of construction documents.  I'm about to sound really old here, but I strongly believe every graduating architect should have to draw a few projects by hand before being allowed to draw them in cadd.  Maybe then they will appreciate the aesthetic and purpose of proper construction documents.

I have actually seen "carpenters" on job sites that have had a caulk gun on their tool belt.  Really?!?!  I guess the majority of America has become a slap it together and paint it world.  "What does it cost me now?" is the new motto, "Not how can I make it last?'.  The 100 year building seems to be a thing of the past, and unfortunately Jacksonville has tried to demolish them all for new developer driven crap.

[JaxNative68]

Ock:  this is jax, make it a double wide bucket!

[thelakelander]

That pic had to be in the teens because the taller Heard building had not been constructed yet.

[thelakelander]

one of the true great pieces of history lost! Ock, i also agree with you on that JRTC pic. The architecture is horrible!

Looks like the Jacksonville Beige style mentioned in the courthouse article.