Downtown Jacksonville has a shortage of hotels. It’s an issue that has existed for decades and even resulted in national ridicule for the city when it hosted the Super Bowl in 2005.
But there was a time, several years ago, when downtown Jax boasted over two dozen hotels. It was back in the heyday of the area, when theaters, restaurants, and streetcars lined its streets rather than empty buildings and skyscrapers.
Most of those hotels were demolished long ago. The rest have either been adapted for another use or continue to sit unused.
We’ve chosen a handful of these historic hotels to highlight; this is by no means a comprehensive list, but it’s a good sampling of the type of hotels that once graced downtown Jax.
The grand 19-story, 510-room Hotel Robert Meyer opened in 1959 at Duval and Julia streets on a portion of the former Hotel Windsor property.
The hotel, designed by New York-based William B. Tabler Architects and built to replace the company’s existing Hotel Roosevelt, featured a lengthy list of amenities including a 200-car underground garage, radio and television in each room, and a ground floor lobby featuring a drug store, small shops, and offices for every major airline of the era. Food and drink options included Café Caribe and the Bali H’ai Cocktail Lounge. It had one floor dedicated entirely to space for holding conventions, with space for 1,200 people in total. Small meeting rooms and a 5,000 square foot exhibit hall were also available.
Hotel Robert Meyer essentially became the city’s first de-facto convention center, but it proved to be too ahead of its time. The hotel fizzled out in 1977, surviving less than 20 years despite its decadent design and amenities.
The building briefly became home to a Holiday Inn, but that concept failed as well. It sat empty for two decades before plans emerged to build a new federal courthouse on its land.
In 1998, the Hotel Robert Meyer building was demolished. The Bryan Simpson United States Courthouse sits at the intersection it once occupied.
