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Richmond Hotel
The Richmond Hotel is a historic building located in the LaVilla neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida. The building was originally built in 1909 as a hotel for Black patrons. Following desegregation, the hotel closed in 1969. As of 2018, the ground-level area of the Richmond Hotel is occupied by Delo Studios. Summary The Richmond Hotel is situated on the corner of N Broad Street and West Church Street, adjacent to the Duval County Courthouse. It is located in the northwest quadrant of Downtown. Specifically the hotel can be found in the northwest corner of the LaVilla neighborhood, a historic African-American neighborhood that is east of I-95 and south of W Union Street. The Richmond Hotel is a 3-story structure, situated on .22 acres of land. There is now a .07 acre lot behind the building. The entire building spans 17,620 square feet. The second story balcony could be used to oversee the street below. ''Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage'' cites a 1942 magazine describin ...
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LaVilla
LaVilla is a historic African American neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida and a was formerly an independent city. It developed after the American Civil War and was eventually annexed to the city of Jacksonville in 1887 and is now considered part of downtown. It was struck by the Great Fire of 1901. During its height, the area was referred to as Harlem of the South and considered "the mecca for African American culture and heritage" in Florida, particularly its northern sections. It remains primarily an African-American neighborhood. The Ritz Theatre, Richmond Hotel, and the Clara White Mission are among the historic buildings in the area. Several are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The area became a transportation hub with rail service developed by Henry Flagler and was also a cigar making center that included Greek and Syrian immigrants. Location LaVilla lies to the northwest in Jacksonville's downtown. It is bounded by State Street to the north, I-95 ...
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Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968. Consolidation gave Jacksonville its great size and placed most of its metropolitan population within the city limits. As of 2020, Jacksonville's population is 949,611, making it the 12th most populous city in the U.S., the most populous city in the Southeast, and the most populous city in the South outside of the state of Texas. With a population of 1,733,937, the Jacksonville metropolitan area ranks as Florida's fourth-largest metropolitan region. Jacksonville straddles the St. Johns River in the First Coast region of northeastern Florida, about south of the Georgia state line ( to the urban core/downtown) and north of Miami. The Jacksonville Beaches communities are along the adjacent Atlantic ...
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Duval County Courthouse
The Duval County Courthouse is the local courthouse for Duval County, Florida. It houses courtrooms and judges from the Duval County and Fourth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, Fourth Judicial Circuit Courts. The new facility is located Downtown Jacksonville, Downtown Jacksonville, Florida; it was built starting in 2009 and opened in 2012. Duval County was created on August 12, 1822 and was formerly part of St. Johns County. Although the county's area was huge, it took more than twenty years before the first courthouse was constructed during the 1840s. A second courthouse was constructed in 1886, but was burned in the Great Fire of 1901. The third courthouse was constructed in 1902 and closed in 1958. A new courthouse funded by the Better Jacksonville Plan was planned in 2000, but budget issues and rising costs delayed its construction until 2009. Previous courthouses File:Courthouse1894JAX.jpg, Second courthouse File:duvalctycthse1920.jpg, Third courthouse File:Duval Courthouse ...
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Downtown Jacksonville
Downtown Jacksonville is the historic core and central business district (CBD) of Jacksonville, Florida USA. It comprises the earliest area of the city to be developed and is located in its geographic center along the narrowing point of the St. Johns River. There are various definitions of what constitutes Jacksonville's downtown; the one used by the city government and other entities defines it as including eight districts: the Central Core (or Northbank), the Southbank, LaVilla, Brooklyn, the Working Waterfront, the Cathedral, the Church, and the Entertainment & Sports District. The area features offices for major corporations such as CSX Corporation, Fidelity National Financial, TIAA Bank, Black Knight Financial, One Call Care Management, Suddath, Interline Brands Haskell, FIS, and Stein Mart. History The site of modern Downtown Jacksonville originated at a crossing of the St. Johns River known to the Seminole as ''Wacca Pilatka'', to the Spanish as the ''Pass de San Nicol ...
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Cab Calloway
Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole. Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming known as the "Hi-de-ho" man of jazz for his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher", originally recorded in 1931. He reached the '' Billboard'' charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s). Calloway ...
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Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's " Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writing and arranging companion. With Strayhorn, he composed multipl ...
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Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career. Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly he ...
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Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday had an innovative influence on jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem, where she was heard by producer John Hammond, who liked her voice. She signed a recording contract with Brunswick in 1935. Collaborations with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia and Decca. By the late 1940s, however, she was beset with legal troubles and drug abuse. After a short prison sentence, she performed at a sold-out conce ...
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Ritz Theatre (Jacksonville)
The Ritz Theatre is an African-American oriented theatre in the LaVilla neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida. The theater, which seats 426, is used for a variety of music, dance and theatrical productions, as well as movies. The spacious lobby is also used for private functions. Just off the lobby is the LaVilla Museum which holds of exhibits. LaVilla is considered "the mecca for African American culture and heritage" in Florida. History The Ritz Theater was designed in the Art Deco style by local architect Jefferson Powell and constructed in 1929 on the site of the Ritz Theater movie house in the LaVilla neighborhood. LaVilla had a thriving, vibrant culture from 1921 to 1971, when it was known as the "Harlem of the South". From the 1970s, the entertainment district of LaVilla went into decline and crime increased, but Mayor Ed Austin's River City Renaissance River City Renaissance was a $235 million bond issue in 1993 by the city of Jacksonville, Florida which funded urban ...
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Great Fire Of 1901
The Great Fire of 1901 was a conflagration that occurred in Jacksonville, Florida on May 3, 1901. It was one of the worst disasters in Florida history and the third largest urban fire in the U.S., next to the Great Chicago Fire, and the 1906 San Francisco fire. Fire Origin In 1901, Jacksonville was a city which consisted mainly of wooden buildings with wood shingled roofs. The city itself had been suffering under a prolonged drought, leaving the building exteriors across the city dry and fire-prone. At around noon on Friday, May 3, 1901, workers at the Cleaveland Fibre Factory, located on the corner of Beaver and Davis Streets, left for lunch. Several minutes later, sparks from the chimney of a nearby building started a fire in a pile of Spanish moss that had been laid out to dry. First, factory workers tried to put it out with a few buckets of water, as they had frequently done on similar occasions. However, the blaze was soon out of control due to the wind picking up out of ...
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Henry John Klutho
Henry John Klutho (1873–1964) was an American architect known for his work in the "Prairie School" style. He helped in the reconstruction of Jacksonville, Florida after the Great Fire of 1901—the largest-ever urban fire in the Southeast—by designing many of the new buildings built after the disaster. This period lasted until the beginning of World War I. Several Jacksonville architects began their careers in the offices of Klutho's firm. Early life Klutho was born in Breese, Illinois, a small midwest town. He lived there until the age of 16, when he left for St. Louis, Missouri to study business. When he became interested in architecture, he moved to New York City to learn more, and became an architect. Work Klutho read about the Great Fire of 1901 in the New York Times and recognized the opportunity of a lifetime. He finished his current projects in New York and quickly moved to Jacksonville. Klutho introduced himself to prominent businessmen and politicians, and within a ...
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