Forgotten Jacksonville: Julia Street

[BackinJax05]

Sure hope the Ambassador Hotel can be saved - somehow.

It was sad to see the Robert Meyer stand vacant for 16 years, before being thoughtlessly imploded. Would have made some great condos.

I remember watching the Mayflower implosion back in 78. Being a kid in 6th grade I thought it was cool watching the old building collapse on itself. Looking at the pictures now, another Jacksonville landmark is gone forever.

As for the George Washington Hotel, another building demolished in the name of "progress". Like the Robert Meyer, the GW would have made some awesome condos.

[WmNussbaum]

Who would have occupied all those condo units back in the late 1970s if the GW and the Mayflower and, later, the Robt Meyer had been saved? What are the occupancy rates for the Carling and 11E today?

As for the courthouse spurring growth in the area, well that makes sense, but . . . . Consider that the old courthouse has been where it is for over 50 years, and damn little grew up around it. I can only think of the Blackstone Building as something that came about because of the courthouse. In fact, in all those years, with all the flow of people into and out of the courthouse, not one decent restaurant opened and stayed open for any appreciable period. That is odd beyond belief.

There was a time when downtown had sizeable restaurants where businessmen congregated at lunchtime, sat at a table, and had staff take and deliver meal orders. Those places downtown barely exist any longer. I think one cause must be a faster paced business day - no time to schmooz over a long lunch these days. Too bad.

[BackinJax05]

Who would have occupied all those condo units back in the late 1970s if the GW and the Mayflower and, later, the Robt Meyer had been saved? What are the occupancy rates for the Carling and 11E today?

As for the courthouse spurring growth in the area, well that makes sense, but . . . . Consider that the old courthouse has been where it is for over 50 years, and damn little grew up around it. I can only think of the Blackstone Building as something that came about because of the courthouse. In fact, in all those years, with all the flow of people into and out of the courthouse, not one decent restaurant opened and stayed open for any appreciable period. That is odd beyond belief.

There was a time when downtown had sizeable restaurants where businessmen congregated at lunchtime, sat at a table, and had staff take and deliver meal orders. Those places downtown barely exist any longer. I think one cause must be a faster paced business day - no time to schmooz over a long lunch these days. Too bad.

Good points

My real gripe was about the demolition of the GW & Robert Meyer Hotels. Especially the Robert Meyer. (I dont really remember the GW) Tearing them down was so wrong.

[Timkin]

Losing all of the Hotels downtown was a bad thing.  Lets see how much growth the New Courthouse promotes ....to back up , lets see when we actually can occupy the place. Millions of dollars later, we still cannot.

In the initial group of pictures on this thread , what is / was the building in Photo #1?

[Ocklawaha]

Who would have occupied all those condo units back in the late 1970s if the GW and the Mayflower and, later, the Robt Meyer had been saved? What are the occupancy rates for the Carling and 11E today?

As for the courthouse spurring growth in the area, well that makes sense, but . . . . Consider that the old courthouse has been where it is for over 50 years, and damn little grew up around it. I can only think of the Blackstone Building as something that came about because of the courthouse. In fact, in all those years, with all the flow of people into and out of the courthouse, not one decent restaurant opened and stayed open for any appreciable period. That is odd beyond belief.

There was a time when downtown had sizeable restaurants where businessmen congregated at lunchtime, sat at a table, and had staff take and deliver meal orders. Those places downtown barely exist any longer. I think one cause must be a faster paced business day - no time to schmooz over a long lunch these days. Too bad.

I agree that this is a less civilized age when it comes to the business milieu, WmNussbaum.

The thing that killed the hotels was Ed Ball's anti labor shooting war against his railroad unions.

I have a different take on this story Stephen. The Florida East Coast Railway didn't have the power to kill our Jacksonville Terminal, fact is the passenger trains kept rolling in throughout the 60's in sizable numbers. Southern Railway, Seaboard Air Line Railroad and the Atlantic Coast Line all dwarfed the FEC which was limited to Jacksonville - Miami via the east coast beach cities.

Ed Ball took on the FEC RY when the company had been in receivership for over 30 years. Their traffic pattern was horrible, 75% of their traffic was passenger and it accounted for only 25% of their income. Ball saw the railroad as a 'short-line' back in an era when FEC size railroads were considered class 1 carriers, IE in the same league as the big mega-railroads. He realized that keeping a 360 mile railroad divided into 3 divisions, with each division requiring a full crew of 4 to 5 men was a thing of the past. The little railroad could not afford to pay 15 guys to do the job of 2 men. When a national pay raise came up in a demand from the non-operating unions (IE clerks) Ball simply told them the FEC wasn't financially able to agree to it. As a show of 'brotherhood' the operating unions then all walked out. Ball decided to streamline all aspects of the company's operations.

Actually ED Ball, commissioned new passenger stations in North Miami, St. Augustine, and had a new terminal planned for Miami itself. When Union members started blowing up trains, passenger service had to be suspended for public safety. After a couple of years the railroad restarted passenger service when the violence settled down. Ed Ball pulled some coaches and amazing luxurious tavern-lounge-observation cars from their pool of equipment formerly shared with the Atlantic Coast Line and Southern and ran the most complete 2 car streamlined train in the country. The catch was the union men in Jacksonville Terminal scarcely would admit that their even was an FEC train being operated. With typical passenger loads of 4 - 10 people, Ball threw in the towel in 1968, and ended all passenger service. He went on to create America's first super railroad out of the formerly bankrupt pike. More then any other single cause, it was the unions that killed the passenger trains on the FEC.

Downtown retail and nightlife had always been vibrant (even during the depression and war years) because of the rail to sea connection provided in the wharves to rail terminal connection downtown.

The only vibrant rail - sea connections with the Florida railroad map ended in Miami when the Cuban Revolution ended the long standing rail car ferry's in 1959. Jacksonville's rail - sea connections were mostly over with by the end of 1920, and only a few river boat connections were left themselves ending in 1930. There was nearly zero traffic between the station and the various steamship lines much beyond when the great old station opened in 1919.

Beginning with Ed Balls shooting war against passenger train union workers which crippled passenger rail from Jacksonville to Miami and ending with the creation of Amtrak and the corrupt real estate speculation that moved the train station from downtown to the north side, the hotels began losing this important customer base.  Within a year of the move of the Amtrak station, the last hotel was closed and almost all of them were demolished shortly afterwards.

It was certainly a shooting war, but it was the Union's that were doing the shooting. Miami trains operated right up until 1971 and the advent of Amtrak, the many jointly operated New York/Chicago - Jacksonville/Miami trains that had been operated over myriad railroads on their journey to Jax, simply shifted to the Seaboard Air Line route between Auburndale, Florida, West Palm, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Anyone could go to Jacksonville terminal during any period of this history and buy a ticket to Miami, what they could no longer buy was a ticket to Miami via the FEC RY.

Amtrak didn't start as a result of anything that happened in Florida, Amtrak was more a product of the Penn Central and the Republican Party's efforts to salvage some basic network of trains as it became clear that EVERY railroad was on the same track that Ed Ball was forced to take. On the day that Amtrak was made official, a couple of young Penn Central executives ran through the headquarters shouting 'Whoo-hoo we've SHOT the passenger train! We've killed the beast!' The FEC RY passenger operations had been gone for more then 3 years by that time.

Lastly, if I'm reading it right, the graphic is showing 5 passenger and 15 freight 'lines' in 1955? Jacksonville never had more then 7 rail routes, split between 4 class one railroads and a handful of terminal companies. The FEC represented only one of those 7 routes. We still have 6 rail routes, split between two class 1, and one class 2 carrier's, plus a handful of terminal companies.

[urbanlibertarian]

So, it appears that passenger rail in most of the US had become unprofitable by the 1960's which says to me that people just came to prefer automobile and air travel.  Now I realize that the choo-choo buffs on this site would like to see passenger rail receive the same subsidies that automobile and air travel get but if that happens will people really use it enough to justify the expense?

[thelakelander]

^The other modes were subsidized to the point that they became more viable options at the time.  However, whether one is a choo choo or crude oil buff, no one can deny that our communities are broke and a major reason for them being broke is the result of spreading the income we take in too thin.  Financially unsustainable low density sprawl is a major factor with our current public financial situation.  Becoming a more multimodal community where residents have a logical choice to drive, walk, bike, or use mass transit is key to getting our long term finances and economy under control.  Why is it key?  Because we spend less money allowing for higher densities and mix of uses that cut down our need to invest the amount of money we currently do for public infrastructure & services (road, rails, utilities, parks, police, fire, etc.).

[Ocklawaha]

So, it appears that passenger rail in most of the US had become unprofitable by the 1960's which says to me that people just came to prefer automobile and air travel.  Now I realize that the choo-choo buffs on this site would like to see passenger rail receive the same subsidies that automobile and air travel get but if that happens will people really use it enough to justify the expense?

Imagine this, without a single new long distance train addition, imagine if we invested in rail at even a fraction of the rate that we invest in air and auto...


Oh my, a 100% increase in INVESTMENT equaled a 269% increase in ridership. California has proved rail is popular today when it is offered frequently in multiple corridors where people travel.

For a bit of history. Passenger trains were never as profitable as freight operations, indeed many private railroads used passenger trains to 'sell' their freight product. The trains were however very popular with the public long after both the automobile and the airline had equaled the railroads in public investment. Some railroad's, such as the Cotton Belt, Virginian or the Georgia and Florida, for example, never really had any significant passenger traffic. It was Commodore Vanderbilt that slammed his fist on his desk and exclaimed 'THE PUBLIC BE DAMNED!' Vanderbilt was the creator of the amazing New York Central Railroad, route of the 20Th Century Limited, one of the flagship trains of American rails. This happened LONG before there was ever a thought about 'Amtrak', public investment, or highway and airline encroachment. To some extent the railroad's were willing 'victims' of the highway and airline investments, and it wasn't until there was a realization that the entire system was in danger of collapse that government and railroads joined forces to try and salvage something from the wreckage.

Today the railroad's are more profitable then ever before, track is in the best condition in history, and with the exception of the lack of political will to move forward with more passenger rail, there is NOTHING to stop it from carrying hundreds of millions of passengers again.

It's not a matter of being a 'Choo-Choo Buff' as much as it is about being truly conservative with our public funds and getting the most bang for our buck.

[Ocklawaha]

ah, I see the disconnect oak, between the word 'lines' meaning railroads that owned the actual rail and 'lines' meaning the number of companies who scheduled or delivered freight and passengers through Jacksonville and paid for the use of the rails owned by the major companies.

In the case of the charts above, it is the number of companies who had ships or cars that stopped in Jacksonville, regardless of whether or not they were leasing infrastructure from other rails.

Much like Amtrak today, which doesn't own much actual track outside of the northeast, and yet ships passengers through Jacksonville both coming and going.

EXACTLY Stephen, if we picked this apart, let's say circa 1962 (just before the FEC strike) we had:

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad
Seaboard Air Line Railroad
Southern Railway (SYSTEM)
Florida East Coast Railway

All of them pumping trains into our terminal... However those trains were not completely the property of these railroads. They were operating through all sorts of different revenue share and logistic agreements. Thus as we stand on the platform out at track 21, we see the Tuscan Red cars of 'The South Wind' a Pennsylvania Railroad Train, heading for Miami from Chicago. We also see 'The Dixie Flyer' and 'The Dixieland' or 'The Dixie Flagler' trains off of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Speaking of the Louisville and Nashville the Gulf Wind would be leaving behind Seaboard power headed for it's home rails to New Orleans, she'd leave the Seaboard at Chattahoochee. The Ponce De Leon and the Royal Palm wear Southern Railway colors, but psst. the track ACTUALLY belongs to 'The Georgia Southern and Florida Railroad' a small piece of the Southern System. The Frisco, otherwise known as the St. Louis - San Francisco Railroad, is dispatching it's 'Kansas City - Florida Special' but it hasn't seen Frisco rails since Birmingham. We also would want to feast our eyes on the amazing colors of those Illinois Central Railroad speedsters, The City Of Miami and The Seminole, they likewise left home rails in Birmingham and have made the trek to Jax after many miles of the Central Of Georgia Railroad...

So it gets quite complex, but you are correct, THAT is the disconnect in our research and comments, I think we agree on the details.

[Ocklawaha]

and whatever the reasons for the decline in the number of carriers, there is a direct correlation between the number of railroad companies operating out of jacksonville and the number of hotels.

As the rail and steamship companies declined, so did the hotels, and without them, the backbone of the downtown retail and service industry dried up.

Without a doubt Stephen, even as water traffic fell off and the railroad-water disconnect came to be normal in the 1930's, the amount of traffic in our hotels headed to or from one of our water or rail carriers was still amazing. Passenger trains and steamships in downtown pumped millions of people into Florida's ONLY metropolitan city.

With Disney, small cruise lines, the St. Johns and Ocklawaha Rivers, and the massive old Jacksonville Terminal still around, there is no reason why the addition of some creative marketing by all of the above + a good charter coach line couldn't rekindle that old fire.