3. Architectural works of Joseph Haygood Blodgett

Two early 20th century residences designed and built by Joseph Haygood Blodgett.

Barnett’s Subdivision may be home to the largest collection of surviving structures designed and built by noted African American architect Joseph Haygood Blodgett. Blodgett’s life and works are a quintessential example of a local rags-to-riches story.

Born into slavery in Augusta, Georgia, Blodgett moved to Jacksonville during the 1890s with one paper dollar and one thin dime to his name, initially working for the railroad for a dollar a day. In 1898, he became a building contractor.

The Great Fire changed the fortunes of Blodgett in 1901. During the rebuilding effort, Blodgett not only designed and built 258 houses but he kept 199 to rent, which eventually made him one of the city’s first Black millionaires. Philadelphia merchant John Wannamaker was astonished that a Black man could accumulate such a fortune in the South without capital and a formal education.

Blodgett’s design trademark was the inclusion of a small upper porch above a large lower porch that often extended around the side of a house. While the majority of Blodgett’s work has been lost through years of local urban renewal programs, a large number of Blodgett-designed residences remain in Barnett’s Subdivision.

4. Zara Cully-Brown Lived Here!

The cast of “The Jeffersons” in 1975. At the bottom right is Zara Cully-Brown. (CBS File Photo)

Miller’s Grocery is a two-story brick building that was erected in 1929 at 1481-1485 North Myrtle Avenue. Owned and operated for 45 years by Cornelius Nathaniel and Mary Gibson Miller, the store was a popular neighborhood destination known for its giant “slaw dogs” and having the best fresh liver in town. In addition, a second retail storefront in the building was a popular speakeasy that was operated by Billie Ruth McCoy. Famous guests included musicians James Brown and Jackie Wilson and Jacksonville Braves baseball player Hank Aaron.

The Miller’s Grocery building.

Famed actress Zara Cully-Brown was a tenant in one of the second floor apartment units. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Zara Cully married Jacksonville-born James McCoil Brown in 1914. Soon, the couple relocated to Jacksonville, where Zara worked as a drama and elocution teacher at her own studio and at Edward Waters University for 15 years.

While living in Jacksonville, Cully-Brown became known as Florida’s “Dean of Drama.” In the early 1950s, the family relocated to Hollywood, California, after growing tired of experiencing racism in Jacksonville. At the age of 82, she originated the Mother Jefferson role on the CBS sitcom The Jeffersons. Easily the funniest person on the show, at the time of her death in 1978, she was one of the oldest active performers on television.

5. A link to John D. Rockefeller

A 1913 Sanborn Map of the Standard Oil Company plant adjacent to Barnett’s Subdivision.

In 1886, the Jacksonville Belt Railroad was constructed to serve as a rail bypass around Downtown by connecting rail lines in Jacksonville’s Eastside with rail lines in LaVilla. Forming the east boundary of the Barnett’s Subdivision development, the belt railroad was eventually acquired by the Seaboard Airline Railroad. Abandoned during the 1980s, the former railroad is a shared-use trail called the S-Line Urban Greenway. The S-Line is what the Seaboard Airline Railroad had been called, while the company’s main competitor, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, was known as the A-Line.

When this railroad through Barnett’s Subdivision was operational, it attracted many industries requiring freight rail service along its path. One of these, among the largest warehouses built in Barnett’s Subdivision, was constructed shortly after the Great Fire of 1901 for John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co.

The former Standard Oil Company plant in Barnett’s Subdivision.

The Standard Oil Co. was incorporated in 1870 by Rockefeller and Henry Flagler. At its height, it was the largest petroleum company in the world. The company’s success made Rockefeller one of the richest people in modern history. The company was so successful that the business came to an end when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was an illegal monopoly in 1911. Flagler, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil business partner, took advantage of his wealth to build LaVilla’s Jacksonville Terminal passenger rail station, now the Prime Osborn Convention Center, and the Florida East Coast Railway between Jacksonville and South Florida.

The former Standard Oil Co. plant in Barnett’s Subdivision still serves a similar purpose more than a century later. Today, it is the location of the H.R. Lewis Petroleum Co.