December 8 – December 27, 2023 The Gingerbread Extravaganza Experience includes the traditional gingerbread exhibit at Old St. Andrew’s Church, as well as a holiday gift shop, and a short tour of the Merrill House Museum. Back this year: Kids Day, Sunday, December 10 — Photo op with Santa Claus, facepainting artists, and more! Old St. […]
Why are historic preservation projects so difficult and expensive? The most obvious answer is that architects, engineers, and contractors cannot see and never really know for sure what is within the floors, walls, and ceilings of an old building until they get into the project. When designing and building a new structure, every detail is […]
The events of the past don’t change, but the way we understand those events does. In other words, the past is past, but history is constantly unfolding. There are a few reasons why history changes. The first and most obvious is that new facts emerge. The people and forces that affect events are often unknown […]
Florida’s largest city, at 201 years old, lacks a public history center. All of Jacksonville’s peer cities do far more with representing their local past than we do in Jacksonville, even though Jacksonville has more (and more interesting) history than any of them. Trying to explain why that is so makes for lively conversations that […]
Incorporated in 1869, the neighborhood known as LaVilla was annexed by the City of Jacksonville in 1887 and thrived into the early decades of the 20th century as the setting of Jacksonville’s richest multi-cultural, multi-ethnic life.
