Inheritance and legacy: The stewardship of the Jacksonville Historical Society
It is only fitting that the Jacksonville Historical Society (JHS) is headquartered in a historic building.
The JHS offices are located at 314 North Palmetto Street in downtown Jacksonville, in what was originally St. Luke’s Hospital. Built in 1878, the building has since been added to the National Register of Historic Places and bears a plaque denoting it as such just inside the entrance.
The building later became the offices of Congressman Charles Bennett.
Today, JHS calls the building home.
The organization has changed drastically since its very first meeting at the Carling Hotel on May 3, 1929. Its charter membership of 231 has grown into a full-time staff plus volunteers and the organization has solidified itself as an integral part of the Jacksonville community.
JHS continues to evolve under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alan Bliss, who would like to see Jacksonville’s historical society expand and take its place as a premiere historical and educational facility for the community. Inspired by museums and historic centers in some of Jacksonville’s peer cities, including Tampa Bay and Orlando, Bliss co-chaired the first Strategic Planning Project when he was on the Board of Directors.
“This is an older city than Tampa and in many ways has a much richer and more complicated history,” he said. “We think we don’t do enough with that in Jacksonville…We think that if we really are prepared to live up to this city’s role and its ambitions, then public history really needs to be a big part of the community discourse. That’s what we do.”
In addition to its community outreach and educational programming, JHS possesses a vast collection of archived materials — a collection started by those first charter members which continues to grow today with the help of material donations from the public.
“It has a wonderful archive of documents, letters, clippings and photos that is the greatest collection of Jacksonville historical memorabilia in existence,” said Jacksonville historian Dr. Wayne Wood. “We’re constantly trying to obtain from the public any old papers or photos that they have to add to this great collection of Jacksonville historical documents.”
This growing collection, in part, is what inspired the society’s $1.3 million capital campaign to renovate the three-story brick building adjacent to its headquarters. Bliss would like to see the former Florida Casket Company factory completely renovated and its entire second floor transformed into a “a modern, state-of-the-art archive with digital processing and preservation work stations, room for the staff to spread out, room for our research collection to be safely stored and professionally catalogued.”
These archived collections are available to the public for research purposes and JHS is happy to accommodate requests to review materials, although it does require community members call ahead to specify the topic or time period needed so archivists can pull relevant materials and assist if necessary.
One of the society’s accomplishments Bliss has “taken the most satisfaction from,” however, is its bicentennial project.
“This is all coming to a head in the next several weeks, but we’ve really been mindful of this for the past few years,” he said. “So messaging the importance of it, the arrival of the bicentennial moment has been part of the conversation for some time.”
The celebrations will take place on Saturday, June 11 in downtown Jacksonville and will include a community festival and fireworks display. Jacksonville was founded on June 15, 1822.
“In Europe, 200 years is not very old — some of the cities go back thousands of years,” Wood explained. “In the United States, there’s not many cities especially the size of Jacksonville that have been around for more than 200 years. So it’s important for everybody to kind of get with it and see how important it is that we’ve been around for 200 years.”
At its core, JHS acts as a steward for Jacksonville’s legacy, preserving its past and sharing its stories with its community to strengthen citizenship, Bliss said.
“Everything is an inheritance and a legacy,” he said. “And as you become aware of that, you become more aware that the generations that come after us — your children and their children — they’re gonna stand on the shoulders of what we do in this moment…That’s the value of history and the more you know about that, the more you become aware of your citizenship role.”
By Michele Leivas
Resident Community News
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