Titusville Historic Downtown District

The historic downtown district is the Titusville Commercial District, entered in the National Register of Historic Places under the alternate name Downtown Titusville Historic District and the Florida site number 8BE560.

The nomination places the district along South Washington Avenue, which it calls the northern artery of U.S. 1, a one way street paired with Hopkins Avenue one block east as the southern artery (National Register nomination, Titusville Commercial District). The form centers the district on the 300 block of South Washington Avenue and adds a small number of structures on Main Street, Julia Street and the 200 block, approximately 6 acres in all. The boundary was drawn around the buildings historically tied to downtown commerce, and the eastern line takes in only the lots historically associated with those buildings. Around that edge, the form describes detached commercial buildings from the 1910s through the 1980s and numerous vacant lots.

The district is one part of a larger nomination. Its form names the Titusville Multiple Property Group as the related listing and ties the district to that group's context, the exploration and settlement of Titusville from 1867 to 1930. The group form itself places Titusville beside the Indian River about 40 miles east of Orlando and says county voters chose it over Eau Gallie or Rockledge as the seat of Brevard County, created in 1879 (Titusville Multiple Property Group form). The nomination was prepared by the state Bureau of Historic Preservation in Tallahassee, and it rates the district significant at the local level under National Register Criteria A and C.

The nomination's resource list names 24 downtown Titusville buildings, 21 counted as contributing and 3 as noncontributing, with construction dates running from circa 1895 to circa 1945.

Rows and dates come from the resource list in the National Register nomination, Titusville Commercial District, which prints the Titusville district's contributing share as 87.5% and marks three buildings with an asterisk as constructed in 1890 and remodeled in 1925 or 1926. The list and the narrative do not agree on two dates. The list gives 1924 for both the bank at 300 South Washington Avenue and the Walker building at 322, while the narrative says bank construction began in April 1924 and the bank was in operation in February 1925, and that the Walker building, begun in June 1924, was completed in 1925. Both versions are in the same federal document; this guide reports them side by side.

Other Titusville street addresses on the list include 102-112 and 214 Julia Street, and 13 and 106 Main Street, plus a run of buildings dated c. 1910 on the 300 block of South Washington Avenue. The list's name column also carries the Duren Building, the Old Titusville Post Office, the Titusville Hardware Store and the Florida Power and Light Co. building.

Downtown Titusville is masonry because a December 1895 fire destroyed the wood frame business blocks, and the merchants rebuilt in brick and hollow clay tile.

The Titusville Multiple Property Group form says the business district then sat between Broad and Julia Streets on Washington Avenue, that its first buildings were almost all wood frame of a highly flammable pine called lighter pine, and that the fire led to improved materials such as brick and hollow clay tile (Multiple Property Group form). The same form describes the Great Freeze of the winter of 1894 to 1895, when the temperature in Titusville dropped as low as 18 degrees, as the other setback of those years.

The district nomination adds that some masonry buildings, such as the Pritchard Building of 1890, survived the fire without substantial damage, and that new masonry buildings soon replaced the lost wooden ones (National Register nomination, Titusville Commercial District). In the 1920s Florida Land Boom, owners in the county seat remodeled to the Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission styles; many brick fronts were stuccoed, which hid original window surrounds and ornamental brickwork. Building stopped when the boom ended with the stock market collapse, closing what the nomination calls a continuous period of settlement and growth of over sixty years in Titusville.

The nomination's significance statement singles out five downtown Titusville buildings: the Pritchard Building, the Spell Building, the Walker Apartment Building, the Bank of Titusville and Trust Company, and the Van Croix Theater, plus the Garage/Grocery service station.

The Pritchard Building at 327 South Washington Avenue, built c. 1890 for Captain James Pritchard, housed his hardware store and is called one of the oldest buildings in the district; its brick was stuccoed and a curvilinear parapet added in 1926 (National Register nomination, Titusville Commercial District). The Spell Building at 317-319 went up in 1912 for the first licensed pharmacist in Titusville, who ran the Banner Drug Store from its corner room. The group form says that pharmacist had opened the Banner Drug Store in 1907 and lists the Spell and Duren buildings among those built in 1912, the year of the current courthouse (Multiple Property Group form).

The Walker Apartment Building at 322, designed by Martin L. Hampton of the Miami firm Hampton and Ehman, held thirteen apartments and twelve hotel rooms on the upper floors above ground floor stores and offices, the nomination says. The bank at 300 breaks from the district's masonry vernacular with Neo-Classical Revival pilasters and Ionic capitals. At 21 Main Street, the Van Croix Theater was held up by an embargo on building materials shipped by the Florida East Coast Railroad late in 1925, opened in March 1926, and cost $200,000 to build. The c. 1926 Garage/Grocery at 219 South Washington Avenue is described as a new building type for Titusville, the service station, with Mission Revival arched bays and curvilinear parapets (National Register nomination, Titusville Commercial District).

The nomination counts three buildings as noncontributing: one building from the mid-1940s and two storefronts on South Washington Avenue changed too much to count.

According to the National Register nomination, Titusville Commercial District, efforts to upgrade the downtown in the years before the nomination replaced original double hung wood windows with aluminum awning or jalousie windows and added paneling and Permastone to several storefronts. The form treats paneling as reversible, but says Permastone substantially altered 330-332 South Washington Avenue, that the storefront at 313-315 was completely remodeled, and that 324 is the only post-historic building in the district, dating from the mid-1940s. For an owner planning work in downtown Titusville, the two altered storefronts show the kinds of change the nomination counted against integrity.

Not by itself: the City of Titusville says its Historic Preservation Board has no jurisdiction over National Register properties unless they are also designated by local ordinance.

The city's historic designation FAQ explains the split. Local designation reflects special significance to Titusville, National Register listing reflects regional or national significance, and a property can hold both; once a property is on the local register, exterior alterations must be reviewed by the board (City of Titusville historic designation FAQ). The same FAQ says Titusville has six National Register listings, including a National Historic District. The board's own page describes its role as design review on all exterior changes to existing sites and structures, and on new development, within designated districts (City of Titusville Historic Preservation Board page).

Every row above is from the city FAQ, which also says owners are not required to undo changes made before designation, and that National Register properties may qualify for a federal Investment Tax Credit only when the cost of the rehabilitation exceeds the adjusted basis of the historic property. The two city pages give different numbers for the board's staff: the FAQ lists 321-567-3778 for the Planning and Growth Management staff liaison, while the board page lists 321-567-3778 for agendas, minutes and bylaws and 321-567-3860 for the staff liaison.

The Titusville district is small enough to walk: the city preservation board's 1850 to 1895 tour describes the commercial district as a loop of approximately 0.5 mile on foot.

That tour page says most visible Titusville storefronts postdate the 1895 fire, so the pioneer era is marked by illustrated panels and wall plaques (Explore Historic Titusville 1850 to 1895 tour). The board's 1900 to present tour covers the buildings themselves, from the Spell Building and the Pritchard Building to the Bank of Titusville and Trust Company at the corner of Main Street and South Washington Avenue (Explore Historic Titusville 1900 to present tour); the Explore Historic Titusville tours guide covers both routes.

Two nearby layers are easy to confuse with the district. The Pritchard House at 424 South Washington Avenue is not on the district's resource list; the group form lists it separately and calls it probably the best Queen Anne house in Titusville and one of the better examples of the style in Florida (Multiple Property Group form). The much larger Titusville Community Redevelopment Area, about 300 acres set up on October 12, 1982, publishes an Urban Design Manual whose chapters include architectural styles and Historic Residential District guidelines (City of Titusville Community Redevelopment Agency page); the Downtown Titusville guide covers the CRA and its grants.

Regular board meetings are at 1 pm on the 1st Monday of each month, upstairs in the City Hall Council Chamber at 555 S Washington Avenue, and the board's seven regular and two alternate members are appointed by City Council to two year terms (board page). The city FAQ adds that four members must be Titusville residents, that members draw on fields from architecture and planning to real estate and law, and that they serve without salary (City of Titusville preservation board FAQ).

Last verified: October 21, 2026, with a fresh read of the Titusville Commercial District nomination and its resource list, the Titusville Multiple Property Group form, the city's preservation board page and designation FAQs, and two Explore Historic Titusville tour pages.