Neighborhood volunteers put sparkle in Venetia Gates
Thanks to neighborhood volunteers, the 90-plus-year-old Venetia Gates at the intersection of Yacht Club Road and Ortega Boulevard have been repaired and sparkle once again. The gates had been the victim of a hit-and-run in the summer of 2019, which left huge concrete pieces in the road and on the sidewalk.
Without a neighborhood association in Ortega or Venetia to assume responsibility or encourage replacing or rebuilding the markers, the clean-up job has been left to neighborhood volunteers. At the time of the mishap, the area was in major reconstruction as the city was involved in addressing serious drainage problems along Ortega Boulevard.
Ortega residents Elizabeth and Hayes Howard have helped care for the iconic markers at the intersection near their home for many years by cleaning them and planting gardens around the bases. Elizabeth Howard said that damage from the crash was extensive and “bricks and a big block of concrete were in the middle of the walkway.” She said she was persistent in calling for help from the city to repair them. Finally, a group of determined citizens spearheaded by Shereth Coble of Yacht Club Road contributed $100 each to have the historical structure repaired and repainted. George Eggan, Peggy Bryan, Margaret Foerster, Linda Alexander, Ann Gibbs, and Coble followed up with securing the repairs.
Foerster said this wasn’t the first time the gates had been damaged. A decade ago, she had “former city councilman Mike Corrigan on speed dial to get the repairs done.”
If the determined residents hadn’t stepped up, the gates might not have been repaired for a long time, Howard said.
The gates mark the entrance to Venetia, the development founded by Col. Raymond C. Turck, who acquired 500 acres of land (mostly swamp) in 1925 where he planned to build a resort hotel, railroad station, yacht basin, and have Venice-like canals with gondolas in the neighborhood. Designed by architect Mellon Greely, the development was planned to be a Mediterranean-style community modeled after Venice, Italy. Unfortunately, Turck’s plans never reached fruition due to the real estate and stock market crash in the late 1920s, the Great Depression, and other factors.
There were only 32 houses in the area, no street markers and the roads just dead ended into the swamp, said John Allen Sr., who moved to Venetia in the 1930s when he was a small child. He and local children enjoyed playing and climbing on the gates which had an electric light suspended from the center. Kids fished and played in the lake, which was where the Gulf Station is now on Roosevelt Boulevard. Ortega Boulevard was a brick road that went all the way to Green Cove Springs, he recalled.
Although the improbable and questionable canals and gondolas are not part of present-day Venetia, the interesting and aesthetically pleasing gates enhance the neighborhood and stand as a testimony to Turck’s vision as well as the determination of the neighbors who worked so diligently to preserve them.
By Peggy Harrell Jennings
Resident Community News
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