Top Navigation

2nd Annual History Fair

Northeast Florida has so much history! Have a yearning for learning? Love to delve into ancestry? Looking for volunteer opportunities or internships? Come spend some time with a variety of nonprofit organizations and discover the rich history of Northeast Florida. Just $5 per person for an evening of fun! Tickets are limited, so purchase yours […]

Continue Reading

Women’s History Month: Who Opened St. Luke’s Hospital? 

At 314 Palmetto Street, in Downtown Jacksonville, sits the office and archive building for the Jacksonville History Center. Staff, interns and volunteers at the Center have the pleasure of working in the first building designed in Florida to serve as a modern hospital. Old St. Luke’s Hospital was built in 1878, but the organization has […]

Continue Reading

What History Is … and Is Not

The City of Jacksonville’s recent removal of another memorial to the Confederacy from a city park has made the idea of “protecting history” a lively topic [again]. Of course, anything that gets people talking about history can’t be all bad, so historians welcome the conversation. To historians, though, fear of the “destruction of history” is […]

Continue Reading

What’s so hard about historic preservation?

Why are historic preservation projects so difficult and expensive? The most obvious answer is that architects, engineers, and contractors cannot see and never really know for sure what is within the floors, walls, and ceilings of an old building until they get into the project. When designing and building a new structure, every detail is […]

Continue Reading

3 Reasons Why History Changes

The events of the past don’t change, but the way we understand those events does. In other words, the past is past, but history is constantly unfolding. There are a few reasons why history changes. The first and most obvious is that new facts emerge. The people and forces that affect events are often unknown […]

Continue Reading

Why the Jacksonville History Center?

Florida’s largest city, at 201 years old, lacks a public history center. All of Jacksonville’s peer cities do far more with representing their local past than we do in Jacksonville, even though Jacksonville has more (and more interesting) history than any of them. Trying to explain why that is so makes for lively conversations that […]

Continue Reading

Jacksonville’s Unique Place in Black History

During this Black History Month of 2024, the Brentwood branch of the Jacksonville Public Library is displaying a traveling poster exhibition titled “A Place for All People,” provided by the Smithsonian Institution. This poster series is an invitation to Americans to visit the newest of the Smithsonian’s museums, the National Museum of African American History […]

Continue Reading

Black History Month Speaker Series Programs

The Jacksonville History Center celebrates Black History Month in February with a second Speaker Series program, then launches Women’s History Month in March with a program on Augusta Savage. Join us February 21 for a roundtable discussion with former members of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office on the history of black policing in Jacksonville.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2019 by Jacksonville Historical Society

THE JACKSONVILLE HISTORY CENTER