How Tallahassee's Streets Got Their Names

They are named for the men running the country, and the army, when Tallahassee was laid out in 1824. The two main thoroughfares were named for President James Monroe and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, according to Gerald Ensley's 2014 profile of Adams Street in the Tallahassee Democrat. Adams had negotiated the purchase of Florida from Spain in 1819, so the capital's grid put the president and the man who closed the deal side by side.

Calhoun Street follows the same logic. In Ensley's Local Names series, republished by the Democrat on November 8, 2024, Calhoun Street honors John C. Calhoun, Monroe's Secretary of War, who in 1818 approved Andrew Jackson's invasion of Florida. That campaign became the First Seminole War and led to Spain selling Florida to the United States. Calhoun later served as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.

Gaines Street, which still marked the southern edge of the named streets in 1902, honors Gen. Edmund Pendleton Gaines, a War of 1812 hero who played a prominent role in the first two Seminole Wars. Ensley's 2014 column reports that in 1824 the first Florida territorial council to meet in Tallahassee made Gaines one of the first names attached to a Tallahassee street. Duval Street, a north-south artery downtown, honors William Pope DuVal, the first civilian territorial governor, under whom Tallahassee was chosen as the capital and who lived in today's Myers Park.

Adams Street was once the more important of the pair. Ensley writes that it ran south from the Governor's Mansion past the Capitol toward the coast, lined with businesses and homes, and that all four Tallahassee City Hall buildings, the first police and fire stations and the Tallahassee Democrat itself have been on it. By 1885, according to the 2024 series, Adams Street had been extended south to Four Points and the Woodville Highway.

It nearly lost its name. In 1921, at the urging of Democrat editor Milton Smith, the city commission approved planting palms on Adams Street from the Capitol to the Governor's Mansion and renaming it Palm Avenue, pitched as Tallahassee's answer to Pennsylvania Avenue. The palms went in, but in 1922 commissioners dropped the rename, saying they wanted to keep honoring John Quincy Adams.

The Capitol complex finished Adams Street as a through road. In September 1972, Ensley reports, Adams Street was permanently closed at Pensacola Street because the new Capitol was built on what had been Adams Street. Its name still anchors every east and west address in Tallahassee.

Many assume the downtown crossroads of Tennessee Street and Monroe Street is the center of the grid. It is not. According to the 2024 series, every street direction and street number in Tallahassee is measured from the intersection of Park Avenue and Adams Street. Park Avenue divides north from south, Adams Street divides east from west, and buildings facing south and east carry even numbers.

The system is younger than the streets. Tallahassee streets were first named in the 1820s, but directions and numbers came in the 20th century: in 1902 Park Avenue (then McCarty Street) and Boulevard Street were made the dividing lines, building numbers followed in 1903, and in 1927 the Tallahassee City Commission moved the east-west line to Adams Street and dropped two-digit numbers in the first blocks, which is why downtown addresses start in the 100s. In 1902 Tallahassee had only 23 named streets, running from Georgia Street on the north to Gaines Street on the south and from Gadsden Street on the east to Gay Street on the west.

The signs themselves changed too. Ensley records that waist-high concrete posts with black lettering marked Tallahassee streets from 1936 until 1979, when national traffic codes required reflective signs mounted higher. Thirty of the old posts now keep cars out of Lafayette Park along Martin Street, and others went to erosion control at the Tallahassee Museum.

Park Avenue is the best known. It was laid out as McCarty Street, named for territorial secretary W.M. McCarty, and the Museum of Florida History describes it as the 200-foot cleared area that originally surrounded the town, with town lots fronting it; the lot that became the Knott House, bought in 1842, fronted McCarty Street. Ensley reports that a local women's group petitioned the city in 1905 to rename it for the downtown parks, and seven blocks of it now straddle the Chain of Parks. The Knott House Museum is listed by the Florida Department of State at 301 East Park Avenue.

College Avenue spent nearly a century as Clinton Street, a name applied in 1824 for either George Clinton or DeWitt Clinton. The 2024 series notes the change to College Avenue came only in 1916, nearly 60 years after the school that became Florida State University opened in 1857; by then the western end had been paved (1912) and widened from 24 to 30 feet.

Boulevard Street, on the west side of old Tallahassee, carried that name for about 150 years before it became Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Ensley explains it was chosen because it ran in front of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, whose pastor, C.K. Steele, was one of King's lieutenants in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; protests split the change into two pieces, the south half in 1980 and the north half in 1984.

The road through the FAMU campus has worn three names. Originally Railroad Avenue, it became Wahnish Way in 1966 for city commissioner Sam Wahnish; in 1971 Railroad Avenue returned to the stretch from Madison Street to FAMU Way, and in 2024 the road was renamed to honor FAMU tennis star Althea Gibson. Nearby in All Saints, Duval Street, Bronough Street and Railroad Avenue once carried the names St. Peter's, St. James and St. Patrick's between Gaines Street and the railroad tracks; only St. Francis, St. Michaels and All Saints streets kept their saints.

Apalachee Parkway honors the Apalachee people, who held the land between the Aucilla and Ochlockonee rivers from the 1100s to the 1700s, met the expeditions of Narvaez and de Soto in the 1500s, and lived with the Spanish at Mission San Luis from 1656 to 1704. Pensacola Street is named for the city it heads toward; it was built from Monroe Street west in 1916 to 1918, and a 1928 to 1929 bridge crossed a swampy area that became the site of Doak Campbell Stadium in 1950.

Macomb Street, once the commercial spine of Frenchtown, is named for David Macomb, who organized Tallahassee's first Fourth of July celebration in 1826. Frenchtown itself, bounded roughly by Brevard, Duval, Call and Dewey streets, has an unsettled name: long-held lore credited French farmers sent by the Marquis de Lafayette in 1831, but later research showed those farmers never came to Tallahassee.

Some names are wartime or farm memories. Ensley's Victory Garden Drive column explains that the street off East Park Avenue led to a World War II community vegetable garden, and that in 1943 the city cut its fall water rate from 30 cents to 10 cents per 1,000 gallons for victory gardeners. Ox Bottom Road, between Thomasville Road and Meridian Road, takes its name from a low field where lost oxen were found and was deeded to Leon County in 1967. Beard Street, by Lafayette Park in the 1925 Highland Terrace subdivision, honors Letitia Beard, a granddaughter of Leon County planter Robert Gamble.

Calhoun Street also carries preservation history. North Calhoun Street has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979 for its 16 historic buildings; the cutting of oaks there in 1940 led to public protest and the Live Oak Trail driving tour; and in 1955 Calhoun Street and Gadsden Street became Tallahassee's first paired one-way streets.

Some of the confusion is built in. In a 2003 column republished December 14, 2024, Ensley noted that East Tennessee Street becomes Mahan Drive and then U.S. Highway 90 East, with no agreement on exactly where each name ends, and that Capital Circle, now split into Northwest, Southwest and Southeast segments, was once simply called the truck route. The intersection where Seventh Avenue meets Thomasville and Meridian roads at the Los Robles gate became Five Points only after it was rebuilt, while Four Points survived on bus signs after the four-way crossing itself was gone.