Zora Neale Hurston is another famous individual associated with the building. During the 1920s and 1930s, she performed in the building.
“Louise McNeill, my sister, was much younger than Zora but being the one in the family who was poetic, artistic, and scholarly, she was especially invited, along with other family and friends, to see a show that was performed in Jacksonville at the Fraternal Order of Odd Fellows building.”
The 1955 page for Florida Green Book sites. The Sunrise Restaurant is highlighted in red. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.
Operating out of an Odd Fellows Hall storefront at 829 Pearl Street, the Sunrise Restaurant was one of several Green Book sites in Jacksonville. First published in 1936 by Victor Green, the ‘Negro Motorist Green Book’ was a compilation of restaurants, over-night accommodations, gas stations and other public services for people of color traversing a “White-only” landscape for Black travelers during segregation.
The Sunrise Restaurant was owned and operated by Purdice and Gladys Sease. A World War I veteran and born in Liberty County, Georgia, Purdice came to Jacksonville after the war. Prior to opening the Sunrise Restaurant, he was employed as a sawmill worker, a porter at Cohen Brothers, and a barber. Born in South Carolina, Gladys was employed as a maid. Sease advertised his restaurant at the Odd Fellows, in the Green Book between 1949 and 1957. Eventually, the restaurant relocated to 529 West State Street.
A 1949 Sanborn map of the Odd Fellows Hall, showing the location of Sease’s Sunshine Restaurant and Bethune’s Central Life Insurance Company. Map courtesy of the Jacksonville Public Library.
While impressive, the sites history extends far beyond the Odd Fellows’ Hall building. A smaller building on the property was constructed as the Jacksonville office for the Central Life Insurance Company of Florida. Founded by Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and a group of Tampa investors in 1922, the company was the state’s last Black-owned insurance company when it closed in 1991.
316 West State Street is the former Jacksonville office of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune’s Central Life Insurance Company.
Currently not designated as a local historic landmark, the Odd Fellows Hall property at 330 West State Street, has been owned by Titus Harvest Dome Spectrum Church since 2010.
Article by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com