Riverside Arts Market - Jacksonville, FL

Market open every
Saturday,
April to December

10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

The Riverside Avondale Historic District.

"The District"

Riverside and Avondale are two adjacent vintage neighborhoods that have blended together over the years, so no one is quite sure where one begins and the other one ends. Locals just call the place Riverside-Avondale, although some who live in the southern half are very particular about proclaiming their Avondale residence, and those in the older northern part are pretty adamant about being from Riverside.

The most important fact is that the Riverside Avondale Historic District has been designated by the City as a protected historic district, and in 1985-1989 it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It is nearly a mile wide and three miles long, making it one of the largest historic districts in the South.

The Riverside Avondale district contains over 6,000 significant structures. It is widely acclaimed as one of the most architecturally diverse neighborhoods in Florida, showcasing landmark specimens of over 15 different architectural styles.

“Eclectic” describes not only the styles of its buildings – homes, churches, schools, and commercial buildings – but also its people. The neighborhood has a wonderfully diverse population, young and old, black and white, artsy and business types, gay and straight, rich and not-so.

It features five major public parks, as well as dozens and dozens of pocket parks. Three major shopping areas of small-scale stores and restaurants are among the historic district’s attractions.

All of this is overseen by Riverside Avondale Preservation, Inc., the city’s oldest and largest neighborhood preservation organization.

Welcome to The District!

"The Great Ameican Neighborhood"

Visitors who pass through Jacksonville on Interstate 10 and Interstate 95 may form an impression of Jacksonville as a sprawling, nearly modern place. The broad arc cut by the St. Johns River through the city is scenic, almost majestic, yet the city leaves the speeding motorist with the sense that this place is neither futuristic nor very historic, a town whose character blends in with the sameness of dozens of other rank-and-file American towns along the miles of interstate.

Hidden away from the highway traveler lies an extraordinary neighborhood that exudes charm and scenery, art and history, just a few blocks from the interstate traffic. In many ways this community embodies what all of Jacksonville once was but no longer is. It is Riverside Avondale, one of American’s great historic neighborhoods.

Once this land was a series of unspectacular plantations, but after the Civil War a couple of Boston Yankees saw its real-estate potential and began selling off parcels for residential purposes. They named it “Riverside,” appropriately enough for a long swath of property overlooking the St. Johns. It was then on the outskirts of Jacksonville, just far enough out of town for many of the city’s well-to-do citizens to decide to build large riverfront homes there. It caught on. By the turn of the century, it had become annexed into the city of Jacksonville, and a street railway was built connecting the suburb with Downtown.

The development of Riverside accelerated soon after a great fire destroyed most of Downtown Jacksonville in 1901, as more and more prominent families migrated to this tranquil setting. With oak-canopied streets and a row of great mansions, Riverside Avenue was admired as the entire city’s most elegant residential street.

During the peak years of Riverside’s development from 1895 to 1929, a profusion of residential building styles gained popularity across the nation. With the influx of building tradesmen who came to the city after the Great Fire, Riverside became a laboratory for aspiring architects and competing residential fashions. The richness and variety of homes built during this period was remarkable. Colonial Revival, Georgian, Shingle Style, Queen Anne/Victorian, Bungalow and Tudor styles were in abundance. Riverside Avenue boasted having more houses designed in the Prairie Style of architecture than any other street outside the Midwest, where Frank Lloyd Wright popularized it.

With the success of Riverside as a suburb, several wealthy investors assembled a large undeveloped tract of land immediately to the south in the summer of 1920. They set about building a new exclusive subdivision that would overshadow all of the other developments around it. They called it “Avondale” and advertised it as “Riverside’s Residential Ideal,” where only the “correct” and “well to do” people would live. The Avondale Company sold 402 of the total 720 lots and completed nearly two hundred homes in its first two years.

As the most elaborately planned development in Jacksonville at that time, Avondale lived up to its publicity. Gently curving roadways and sixteen small parks were laid out by a well-known landscape architect from Ohio. Adopting the architectural style that would saturate Florida during the booming years of the 1920s, a large proportion of the early Avondale residences were built in the Mediterranean Revival style. Would-be Italian and Spanish villas soon sprang up beneath the moss-draped oak trees.

Riverside Avondale is not on any of the tourist maps, and the neighbors like it that way, quietly hidden off the interstate, preserved for future generations of families to enjoy. It is one of America’s unique neighborhoods.

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Riverside Arts Market

Riverside Avenue at Interstate-95

Jacksonville, Florida

[ MAP]
Mailing Address: 2623 Herschel Street, Jacksonville, FL 32204
Phone: 904-554-6865

e-mail us at info@riversideartsmarket.com

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