Before urban renewal: LaVilla's West Monroe Street

[thelakelander]

What does urban renewal look like? What did LaVilla, Jacksonville's oldest suburb, dating back to 1866 look like? Ask no more. We recently received access to pre-demolition photographs of properties being prepared to be razed as a part of the River City Renaissance plan. Since there are so many to share, we'll occasionally show one street at a time. Today, we'll start with West Monroe Street.

Read More: https://www.thejaxsonmag.com/article/before-urban-renewal-lavillas-west-monroe-street/

[Jax_Developer]

Obviously within the CCBD so "anything is possible" but it's a bit ironic to me that *most* zoning won't allow for these types of neighborhoods anymore.

[thelakelander]

Yes, I still have +150 LaVilla images to get through, but its clear the neighborhood packed some density, even without significant height. Some additional random examples from various areas of the neighborhood. Most the neighborhood was some form of missing middle housing:

[Steve]

I feel like just these houses alone would make the neighborhood denser.....and this was one street. Wow.

[fsu813]

Small lot size = more density. Tragedy this historic housing stock was wiped out. Much of it looks basically fine to live in/renovate, not in horrible condition. Opportunity lost.

[jaxlongtimer]

With the exception of one picture, I note that every building also featured front porches.  Would be interesting if the building code started requiring that in every house built in a certain level of density or more.  Maybe, just require it for all houses unless a waiver is applied for .

Imagine what that might do for neighborhood building and bringing more civility to our social structure.

[thelakelander]

The house with no porch was originally built with one. In neighborhoods that were redlined and home to families that were limited in where they could live or get financing, there was a trend of converting porches into additional living space. So all of the residences in the photos had porches!