Downtown Jacksonville

Pictures from my childhood home area.

Up until my early teenage years (about 1962), downtown was the center of the city in terms of work, shopping, and entertainment. With the first big shopping malls, it started dying and by about the mid-70's most of the retail stores had moved out, the movie theatres had died, the hotels had become shuttered, and business had begun moving to suburban office parks. There have been various efforts to revitalize it over the years, but that doesn't seem to have really taken off until the 90's (it's looking better now than it did in the 80's).

Scans of older pictures, best viewed from left to right, as part of Jacksonville set.