DAVIS STREET IN SPRINGFIELD

(Source of image: Florida State Archives)

You might think that you are looking at a country road.  Actually, this is Davis Street in Springfield in 1942. The photo was snapped at a railroad crossing near its intersection with 12th Street.  The rails are now gone, and local residents use the right-of-way as a walkway and driveway.  On the left sits a little, tin-roofed restaurant owned by an African American, Pearle H. Douglas.  Called "Miss Pearle" by her patrons, she lived at her place of business.  Occupying the structure today is a neighborhood grocery store.  Davis Street may have been brick until the 1960s, according to the storeowner.  Now paved, the road is still rather narrow, running between small, older homes north of the 8th Street intersection.  Davis is located several hundred yards east of I-95. 

The tall chimney on the right belonged to the Davis Street School, an African American institution established in 1917.  It was later renamed Isaiah Blocker Junior High School.  Today, the old auditorium/gymnasium building at the school contains the Christ Tabernacle Missionary Church, founded in 1986.  Three wooden crosses stand in front.  Just north of the church is Roosevelt Gardens, which opened in May 1950.  Not considering public housing developments, Roosevelt Gardens once ranked as the city's largest apartment complex for African Americans, according to a longtime Jax resident who is writing about local black history.  With its one- and two-story selections, Roosevelt Gardens was considered among Jacksonville's premier places for middle-class African Americans to live.

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