For many years, downtown Jacksonville’s beautiful historic buildings were left to rot away without a purpose. For a variety of reasons, most of them had been vacant since the 1970s.
The ones that weren’t left to wither away either retained their original tenants or were unceremoniously demolished to make room for something new – usually a poorly-designed parking garage.
But within the past few decades, the tide has begun to turn on historic preservation within Jax’s urban core. Several of those long-vacant buildings have been painstakingly restored and revitalized, and they now live on with new purposes that will likely keep them around for decades to come.
To honor the growth of adaptive reuse and historic preservation in downtown Jax, we’ve compiled a giant collection of our existing downtown-centric Jax Evolved pieces.
In the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1901, many of Jacksonville’s most important buildings were damaged or even destroyed.
One of the buildings ruined by the fire was the city’s library, which had been formed only a couple of decades earlier.
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A local lawyer wrote to Andrew Carnegie, steel industry magnate and the father of the modern philanthropy movement, in an attempt to secure funds to have a new library built. Libraries were one of Carnegie’s favorite philanthropic ventures; over the course of his lifetime, he donated the funds for the construction of over 2,500 libraries across the globe.
Carnegie offered $50,000 of funding for a new library in Jax, with a few conditions. The city had to commit to supporting the library financially and had to find the property for it. He also required that the library be free and open to all city residents. This meant that in the days of segregation, black and white residents would be given equal access to the library.
Plans were set into motion to construct the limestone building at the corner of Ocean and Adams streets. It was designed by architect Henry Klutho.
The library opened in the summer of 1905, with a collection of over 8,000 books. It was the first tax-supported library in the state of Florida. The building became the centerpiece of the newly-formed Jacksonville Public Library system, which soon branched out across the city.
Eventually the building’s size became an issue as the city’s population expanded. In 1960, the city initiated plans to build a new Main Library building.
By 1965, the Haydon Burns building opened down the street at 122 N. Ocean Street. The Carnegie building was left behind.
In 1982, then-Mayor Jake Godbold announced that the building was up for sale, along with several other city-owned buildings. Bedell Law Firm bought the building for $314,000 to restore it and convert it to law offices.
It makes sense that Bedell would be the ones to purchase the historic property. The firm itself has been around since 1865, earning it the title of oldest law firm in Florida.
The $1 million restoration was designed by Jacksonville architect Ted Pappas. It took around three years to complete, and in January 1987 it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The Carnegie-Bedell building – now officially referred to as the Bedell Building – has served as the headquarters for the Bedell Law Firm ever since, providing continued life to a property with over 100 years of history.
