A TRIP UP OLD DAVIS STREET

(Source of image: Florida State Archives)

SEE BELOW FOR INFO ABOUT THE PICTURE ABOVE

CLICK HERE FOR ANOTHER PHOTO AT SAME LOCATION

CLICK HERE FOR GEORGE E. ROSS & DAVIS STREET

CLICK HERE TO VISIT ST. STEPHENS AME CHURCH

CLICK HERE FOR DAVIS STREET RAILROAD CROSSING

CLICK HERE FOR A TAVERN

CLICK HERE TO EAT AT A BAKERY

CLICK HERE FOR SHOTGUN HOUSES  

CLICK HERE FOR ANOTHER DAVIS STREET PIC

Let's go back to December 1941, the month during which the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  This was when a photographer snapped the Jacksonville photo above.  It shows a scene just north of today's Ritz Theatre & La Villa Museum on Davis Street.  We're looking north up Davis, from its intersection with Kings Road.  Notice how Kings Road, a highway leading out of town, was paved.  Bricks still made up the surface of Davis, though. 

Davis Street used to hum with activity, a thriving commercial district mostly oriented toward African Americans.  Take another look at the photo:  Sixty years ago, many La Villa residents visited the structure with the iron balcony.  Dr. Lincoln B. Childs is someone well remembered today as maintaining a medical office there.  (The physician and his wife Theodosia made their home at 132 Magnolia.)  The building also offered a variety of businesses, including the D & B Cafe, a shoe store owned by Joseph Bahnan, a barbershop owned by William M. Davis (an African American), a clothing cleaner owned by George W. Parker (African American), the OK Furniture Company, an A & P grocery store (which later changed to a Daylight Supermarket), and Ossi Abdelrahim's food store.  Several residents lived on the floor above these establishments.

What's in the spot of the structure today?  A field next to one of the buildings on the FCCJ Downtown Campus.

The structure with the iron balcony stood cattycornered from the Witschen Building.  Until a few years ago, the Witschen was the largest remaining commercial structure along Davis Street.  Dating from 1912 (the year the Titanic sank), the Witschen looked somewhat similar to the structure above.  On the first floor were stores for shoes, groceries, drugs, and hardware.  On the second level were residences with iron-railed balconies.  During the 1980s & '90s, though, bulldozers flattened the Witschen Building and its neighboring commercial structures of comparable vintage.  This added to the gradual decline of the once-bustling area.  (In the spot of the Witschen Building today is the Urban League Building.  It contained the well-known La Villa Grill, which closed not too long ago.) 

Especially during the 1960s, it was integration that brought about the demise of many black-owned businesses.  African Americans began to visit white-owned enterprises that had formerly been off limits.  The new competition killed a number of black ventures, which often didn't have the financial reserves of their white counterparts.

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