Durkeeville in Jacksonville, Florida

Durkeeville is the historically Black neighborhood on the near Northside of Jacksonville, just across Interstate 95 from Downtown and west of Historic Springfield. The Jaxson notes that it is also called Mid-Westside Jacksonville and that it exists because of the growth of Jacksonville's African American community during segregation. Jacksonville Today describes the greater Durkeeville community of the early 20th century as a hub of Black culture, business and social life.

Most of what defines the place is still standing. Myrtle Avenue runs through the middle as the commercial spine. Edward Waters University, which Visit Jacksonville counts as part of Durkeeville and the Northside, moved near the streetcar line in the early 1900s, and Stanton College Preparatory School occupies the old Mason Park grounds near Myrtle Avenue and West 13th Street. The ballpark long known as Durkee Field still stands on Myrtle Avenue, and the Durkee Gardens Historic District, a National Register district of mid-century brick homes, fills the blocks north of West 8th Street. Where neighboring Sugar Hill was cleared for the interstate, Durkeeville survived with its street grid and much of its building stock in place.

The name comes from the Durkee family of New York. Jacksonville Today (2024) names Joseph H. Durkee, a former U.S. military officer, and The Jaxson's 2018 history reports that the large tract north of Barnett's Subdivision belonged to his son, Dr. Jay H. Durkee, a real estate developer who settled in Jacksonville after the Civil War. The family first pictured industrial and railroad uses next to the new Seaboard Air Line Railroad and even extended a rail spur to Myrtle Avenue just south of West 13th Street. When that industry never came, much of the land was platted for Jacksonville's fast growing Black middle class. Visit Jacksonville tells the same story in short form: when the railroad bypassed the Durkee land, it was divided into parcels and sold to Black buyers eager to own property.

A Black-owned streetcar company laid the groundwork. The North Jacksonville Street Railway, Town and Improvement Company, known as the Colored Man's Railroad, was established in 1902 and ran a loop north of LaVilla on Kings Road, Myrtle Avenue, 13th Street and Davis Street. Its opening ceremonies took place on August 24, 1903, at Mason Park, with Mayor George M. Nolan and former Mayor Duncan U. Fletcher speaking. Within a few years Edward Waters College and the Cookman Institute had moved their campuses near the line, and the blocks of Barnett's Subdivision south of West 8th Street were largely built out by 1930 as a walkable district of small duplexes and corner stores. The Jaxson explains why Myrtle Avenue is wider than the side streets: the streetcar ran down the middle of it, back when it was still called Durkee Avenue.

Industry arrived too. The first beer brewed in Durkeeville at the Jax Brewing Company on West 16th Street reached the market on May 16, 1914, and by 1943 the brewery was turning out 100,348 barrels a year, according to The Jaxson. The brewery building now holds a warehousing business.

Segregation narrowed the options. The Durkeeville Historical Society writes that Jim Crow law barred Black residents from living in many parts of Jacksonville, and that a Durkeeville Housing Authority formed in 1936 to build a modern neighborhood for working and middle class families. In 1937 the Public Works Administration completed the 215-unit Durkeeville public housing development just south of West 8th Street, between Myrtle Avenue and the Seaboard Air Line tracks. Jacksonville Today reports it was the second public housing project built in Florida under the PWA and was intended for Jacksonville's Black middle class during the 1930s.

The rest of the Durkee land became Durkee Gardens, an upscale Black subdivision platted between 1934 and 1944. The Jaxson reports that through the end of segregation the neighborhood was home to many of the city's prominent Black physicians, educators, business people and religious leaders. Black builders shaped its look. Joseph Haygood Blodgett, born into slavery in Augusta, Georgia, built 258 houses after the Great Fire of 1901 and kept 199 to rent, becoming one of the city's first Black millionaires; Durkeeville holds the largest surviving collection of his work. James Edwards Hutchins and Sanford Augustus Brookings built many of the red brick homes north of West 8th Street, and architect George Patterson built his own house on West 12th Street in 1952.

Institutions followed the families. The Diocese of St. Augustine established St. Pius V Catholic School on West 13th Street in 1921 for Jacksonville's Black Catholic community. Walkers Commercial and Vocational College, opened by Julia Walker-Brown in LaVilla in 1916, moved to the block of 8th and Myrtle in 1950 and taught bookkeeping, secretarial work and trades there until 1970. On Kings Road, the Fiesta Motel opened in 1961 with 26 air-conditioned rooms for Black travelers and was listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book; the building is now the Kings Courtyard Apartments.

Durkee Gardens is the part of Durkeeville listed on the National Register of Historic Places. According to Jacksonville Today, the district is generally bounded by Myrtle Avenue, McConihe Street, Payne Avenue and 13th Street, covers 49 acres and includes 209 contributing buildings completed between 1934 and 1969. The Minimal Traditional style dominates. Streets such as West 9th, West 10th, West 11th and West 12th, McConihe Street and Durkee Drive are lined with brick houses from the late 1930s through the 1950s, many of them documented with their completion years in the Jaxson's 2018 survey.

The district grew because nearby Sugar Hill ran out of room. The Jaxson reports that growth north of West 8th Street came from the rapidly expanding Black middle class and a lack of land in built-out Sugar Hill. Interstate 95, built through the area in the late 1950s, later destroyed Sugar Hill, and by the 1970s it was virtually erased. Durkeeville, on the far side of the highway, kept its early 20th century fabric.

Myrtle Avenue is still the main street, linking Durkeeville with LaVilla, Brooklyn and Moncrief and carrying homes, stores, churches, ballfields and light industry. Visit Jacksonville lists long-standing businesses on the corridor such as Paschal Brothers Hardware and Lumber, Skinner's Florist and Standard Feed and Seed. The Jaxson dates the building that houses Skinner Florist to 1934 and the Durkeeville and Co. building to 1945. Congregations along the avenue include Mount Olive Primitive Baptist Church, completed in 1948, Mount Ararat Missionary Baptist Church, completed in 1957, and St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, designed and built by James Edward Hutchins in 1956.

Durkee Field anchors the north end. The City of Jacksonville reports that the ballpark, first known as Barrs Field, was bought by the city for $348,000 in 1932, that the stadium was built in 1936 and 1937, and that it was renamed J. P. Small Memorial Park Stadium in July 1980 for James P. Small, who taught and coached at Stanton for 33 years. It was home to the Jacksonville Red Caps of the Negro American League, and WJCT News reported in 2017 that Hank Aaron lived four blocks from the field in the 1950s while playing for the Jacksonville Braves. A museum was added under the grandstand in 2006, and the field itself was renamed Hank Aaron Ballfield in 2018. The full baseball story has its own page.

Public housing changed shape in 1999, when the 1937 Durkeeville projects were replaced by The Oaks at Durkeeville, Florida's first redevelopment under the federal HOPE VI program. The Oaks has 164 apartments, 28 market-rate single family homes and a 36-unit senior building with retail space on Myrtle Avenue (The Jaxson).

The Durkeeville Historical Society and Museum has worked since 1998 to preserve the neighborhood's history, with exhibits of memorabilia and artifacts from Durkeeville and greater Jacksonville at its museum on West 19th Street. The museum is open Saturdays from noon to 3 p.m., with weekday tours and archive research by appointment. The old Seaboard Air Line belt line through the neighborhood, built in 1886 between Springfield and LaVilla and abandoned in the 1980s, is now the S-Line Urban Greenway; the City of Jacksonville describes it as an urban trail built on an abandoned CSX right-of-way shaped like the letter S, connecting schools and bus stops.