Richmond Hotel
422 Broad Street
Built in 1909, the Richmond Hotel was once one of the finest hotels in Downtown Jacksonville for African-Americans during the Jim Crow era. Featuring 48 upper floor rooms and a 65 seat restaurant, its famed guests included Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Billie Holiday. The Richmond closed for good in the early 1970s, following desegregation. Today, its street level retail spaces are occupied by Delo Studios, an art gallery, meeting and event space. However, the building’s former hotel rooms have largely sat empty and untouched over the past five decades.
The Richmond Hotel in 1942. (Courtesy of the Crisis Magazine)
Sunrise Restaurant
827-29 Pearl Street
The Sunrise Restaurant was located inside George D. Wood’s Independent Furniture Company store at the intersection of State and Pearl Streets in the Black Bottom. Wood was the president of the Mount Olive Cemetery Association and owner of the furniture store and the Durkeeville Apartments. The storefront was located on the ground floor of the Fraternal Order of Odd Fellows Hall.
According to James Weldon Johnson, the Odd Fellows lodges were made up of white collar workers while the local Masonic lodges recruited largely from stevedores, hod carriers, and lumber mill and brickyard hands. Located at the southeast corner of State and Cedar (now Pearl) streets, the Odd Fellows Hall was designed as a three level building with retail on the ground floor.
Built right after the Great Fire of 1901, this is where the Cookman Institute held its graduation ceremony in 1907. A young A. Philip Randolph, the class valedictorian, gave a speech he called “The Man of the Hour.” Randolph would later organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African-American labor union and the March on Washington in 1963.
In March 1912, Booker T. Washington, co-founder of the National Negro Business League and key proponent of African-American businesses, visited Jacksonville as a part of his Florida tour. Here, he attended a banquet held for him after arriving in town by special train. In later years, Zora Neale Hurston also performed at the Fraternal Order of Odd Fellows.
Article by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com