Roosevelt Square (Ortega Park) was built over a sawmill community

A series of aerials showing the sawmill community and the development of Ortega Park shopping center during the course of the 20th century.

Now known as Ortega Park, Roosevelt Mall opened in 1961 as an open air shopping center. The shopping center was converted into an enclosed mall in 1968. Anchors during this era included Ivey’s, Furchgott’s, Levy-Wolf, Purcell’s and F.W. Woolworth. During the late 1990s, it was converted back into an open air strip shopping center. Prior to its days as a Westside retail epicenter, the site was a rural sawmill community.

Dating back to 1912, this community was home to African American laborers of the nearby Gress Lumber Company. The community was described as having a company store, church and single and double shotgun homes for twelve to fifteen families. Once a destination for lumber products floated along Cedar and McGirts creeks, the mill was destroyed by fire and closed permanently by 1955.

Fueled to life by World War II

An example of a frame vernacular residential dwelling built after the 1940 opening of NAS Jacksonville.

Platted prior to the Great Depression, Lakeshore remained a sparsely developed, rural community on the outskirts of Jacksonville during the 1930s. However, the neighborhood’s fortunes changed with the opening of Naval Air Station Jacksonville. Commissioned on October 15, 1940, the military base was the first part of the Jacksonville Navy Complex. During World War II, more than 10,000 pilots and 11,000 airmen earned their “wings of gold” at the air station. Straddling Riverdale Road, Lakeshore’s Riverdale Gardens subdivision was platted in 1941 in response to a housing shortage for Naval officers. Once a failed 1920s land boom development, the neighborhood had become largely developed by the end of the 1960s.

Editorial by Ennis Davis, AICP. Photographs courtesy of wikipedia. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com