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The Coastal
  • Development
    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: South Moon Under coming to SJTC

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop coming to Mandarin

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Scramblers coming to Deerwood, Lakewood

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Gucci to SJTC; Taverna debuting new concept

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Dolly Llama to PVB; Lowe’s, Wawa to CR-210

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Vestcor planning Lofts at San Marco East

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Rockler Woodworking coming to SJTC

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Sportsman’s Warehouse coming to River City Marketplace

    Building Up Jax - Jacksonville Construction and Development Updates Each Saturday

    Building Up Jax: Tesla expanding its local presence

  • History
    • All
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    Florida Times-Union building

    Story of a Building: The Florida Times-Union Building

    Edgewood Bakery

    Remembering Edgewood Bakery: Once a Murray Hill Staple, Now an Empty Building

    jacksonville university

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    history of Ed wAters College

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    Worman's bAKERY AND DELI

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    Before Normandy Mall, There Was the Loew’s Normandy Drive-In Theatre

    Green Turtle Restaurant in Jacksonville, fl

    Remembering Joe Adeeb’s Green Turtle Restaurant

    San Marco Theater, San Marco, Jacksonville, FL

    Story of a Building: San Marco Theatre

    Sun-Ray Cinema building Five Points Jacksonville FL

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    JAX EVOLVED: San Marco Preservation Society Now Occupies South Jacksonville City Hall

    JAX EVOLVED: San Marco Preservation Society Now Occupies South Jacksonville City Hall

    Old St. Luke's Hospital jacksonville fl

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    Novel Coworking / Groover-Stewart Drug Company Building, 25 N. Market Street, Jacksonville, FL - Image copyright 2020 Google

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    JAX EVOLVED: From Brewster Hospital to North Florida Land Trust

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JAX EVOLVED: St. James Building

by The Coastal
November 6, 2017
in Featured, Jax Evolved
St. James Building, Jacksonville, FL
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The St. James Building, located at 117 W. Duval St. in downtown Jacksonville, is one of the country’s most beautiful city halls.

But the building has a much longer history than its relatively short stint as the center of Jacksonville’s city government.

The building sits on a site once occupied by the St. James Hotel – after which the “newer” building was named. The hotel was built shortly after the Civil War, and featured a restaurant, barber shop, and wine room among other amenities. It was a popular spot for out-of-town guests during a period of time in which Jax was a hotspot for traveling northerners.

When the hotel burnt down in the Great Fire of 1901, the property was snatched up by a competitor to ensure whatever was built in its place wouldn’t be another hotel. It was eventually sold to Morris and Jacob Cohen, who planned to open a department store there.

A grand design developed by famed architect Henry J. Klutho was chosen for the building. Klutho’s plans called for a four-story, mixed-use structure. There were street-level shops on the outside, with Cohen Brothers occupying the first two floors of the interior, and two stories of rentable office space on top of the store. The top of the department store featured a giant glass dome as its centerpiece. The interior of the store almost resembled the center court of a shopping mall, decades before the widespread introduction of suburban malls.

Klutho himself rented space in the building for around a decade.

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The store opened in 1912 as the largest structure in Jacksonville at the time, and it became an instant hit. It would be a key part of some of downtown Jacksonville’s most successful years.

A remodel in the mid-1920s resulted in the removal of the department store’s glass dome. This was done in spite of protests from an irate Klutho, who ended up terminating his office lease according to an account from historian Wayne Wood.

The department store operated as Cohen Brothers until May Department Stores bought it in 1958 and turned it into May Cohens. May indicated a desire to invest further in the fast-growing Jacksonville area.

That further investment, however, would eventually spell the end of the downtown store. The company expanded, adding locations at newly-built suburban shopping malls. These malls were rapidly becoming the way of the future, leaving downtown’s department stores to slowly rot away.

May Cohens managed to chug along for 30 more years, closing its doors in 1987. And unfortunately, the brand’s suburban locations didn’t survive long enough to become part of May’s 2006 merger with Macy’s – which would’ve potentially resulted in a Macy’s in Jax.

The St. James Building sat without a major tenant for less than a decade when in 1993, as part of the River City Renaissance plan, Mayor Ed Austin proposed that the city purchase and restore the building for use as its new City Hall. The project would come at a price tag of $24 million, and would involve the reconstruction of Klutho’s glass dome.

Additional upgrades included access for people with disabilities, energy-efficiency upgrades, and reversing many of the renovations made to the building since its original construction.

The building re-opened as Jacksonville City Hall in December 1997. Since then, small upgrades and renovation projects have occurred to keep the building modern enough for its main usage.

Today, it continues to serve as our City Hall building, and ranks among the nation’s most impressive and historic city halls.

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The Coastal is a local magazine in Jacksonville, FL, founded in 2015 to bring you stories about the past, present, and future of the First Coast.

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