USA > Florida > Florida, 1513-1913, past and future; four hundred years of wars and peace and industrial development > Part 22
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And the men and women who have made Jacksonville what it is, benumbed by the magnitude of the disaster, rested that night. The day that followed found then inspired with new courage, and it was on that fourth day of May that the new and greater Jacksonville was started from its baptism of flame on its career of advance that has known not a moment of ceasing or rest to the present, and the advance of today is at a rate more rapid than ever before.
BUILDING RECORDS
It is interesting to note some of the particulars of that growth in the twelve and more years of building, or rebuilding, of the opera- tions within the city limits that have not been extended since 1889. In the period between the fire and January 1, 1913, permits were issued for new buildings and reconstruction to the number of 13,059, an average for the entire period of eleven and a half years of 3.6 for every working day. The total cost of these improvements was $35,- 896,898, an average daily expenditure for the entire period of $9,837.50.
In the two or three years immediately following the fire, many buildings were constructed more or less hurriedly to meet emergencies
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created by the disaster. The records of the last five years show a steady increase in building operations, as appears in the following tabulation :
Number Build-
Year.
ing Permits.
Estimated Total Cost.
Average Daily Expenditure.
1908.
819
$2,075,500
$ 6,631
1909.
1,058
2,310,025
7,380
1910
1,268
3,184,940
10,176
1911
1,343
3,589,805
11,469
1912.
1,145
3,807,957
12,166
The average cost of these buildings and their increasing value are also worthy of notice. When it is recalled that of the more than thirteen thousand buildings erected within the period under considera- tion, the larger part was of wood construction, including the cheapest houses in the outskirts of the city, it will be seen that the average is high. This value in 1908, was $2,532; in 1909 it was $2,183; in 1910, $2,512; in 1911, $2,674; and in 1912, $3,317. From this it is apparent that the buildings are of a continually bettering class and more substantial.
VALUE OF CONSTRUCTION
The cost of buildings under construction on April 1, 1913, was above two and a half million dollars, and basing the operations for that year on the operations of the first four months, for which only the figures are available at this writing, it is probable that they will exceed four million dollars during the year.
It must be remembered that the construction values and figures already outlined, are included within the actual limits of the city, which as noted before, have not been extended for twenty-four years. The changes wrought by the reconstruction and expanding of the city have built up large residence areas outside these old boundaries. The dividing lines between the city and its suburbs are distinguish- able only on the official maps, but they are the limits of municipal jurisdiction. Hundreds of beautiful and expensive homes have been erected in these suburbs and should be included in the Greater Jack- sonville of today. There are no official records to determine their numbers or cost. Reliable authorities, backed by known facts, esti- mate their value from one-quarter to one-third of the work done inside the city. Accepting the latter fraction as wholly within the prob- abilities, the value of building operations within the Greater Jackson-
GOVERNMENT LIGHTHOUSE AT MAYPORT AT MOUTH OF ST. JOHN'S RIVER
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ville for the past twelve years has been between $48,000,000 and $50,000,000. And in leaving this subject, it is necessary only to mention the fact that the upbuilding of the city and its surroundings is progressing at a rate more rapid than ever before.
CHANGING POPULATION
Jacksonville's population has been counted a good many times, often by her own interested citizens and by state authority, but that no charge of bias may be made, the figures of the United States Census Bureau are given for the last three decades, all of them cover- ing the same geographical territory that is now included within the city limits :
Year.
Population.
Percentage of Increase.
1890
17,201
1900
28,429
65.3
1910
57,699
102.5
The increase for the first decade of the present century covered the period of the great fire. This growth is all the more remarkable when compared with that of other cities in the same ten-year period, in which surrounding territory made possible a large portion of the splendid showings that were recorded. Birmingham, Alabama, with an increase of nearly 500 per cent in population, enlarged its terri- torial area from seven square miles to forty-nine. Atlanta, Georgia, doubled its area to secure less than a doubling of its population.
Farther study shows that the increase in Jacksonville's population in the last census decade was not uniformly distributed over the entire ten years, but that a little more than sixty-five percent of it came between 1905 and 1910. The ratio of growth is constantly increasing and every indication serves to prove that it is more sub- stantial at the present time than ever before. Estimating according to the rules adopted by United States census authorities, Jackson- ville's population within the city limits on April 1, 1913, was ap- proximately seventy thousand permanent residents.
The city directory for the current year, whose compilation cov- ered the period to March 1, and which included the names of city and suburban residents, or of the Greater Jacksonville, contained 34,580 names. This multiplied by two and one-half, the rule applied by United States authorities, gives 86,450 as the number of citizens
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resident in Florida's metropolis. The present ratio of increase will give the Greater Jacksonville 160,000 in 1920.
REBUILDING OF JACKSONVILLE
The rebuilding and remodeling of the Greater Jacksonville have changed and expanded the city almost beyond the remembrance of the final decade of the last century. Few, even of the most far- sighted, on that night of May 3, 1901, when the city was melting down before the flames, could have pictured a more beautiful and a greater city rising from the ashes in less than fifty years. But the dozen years that have gone, have more than justified the most ambitious hopes that could have been cherished at that time.
One of the city's most attractive adornments was the magnificent trees that lined her avenues and streets before the fire. Great oaks and magnolias and palms that had grown to maturity through fifty years, were shriveled and withered. Only their blackened trunks re- mained. Outside the fire limits of that time, the splendid rows of oaks that arch above many of the streets today, suggest the scenic beauty that covered the entire city before. But to replace these losses civic authorities and private citizens have set new trees and time will com- plete the restoration of past glory.
The rebuilding of the residence sections has tended largely towards suburban occupation, where more spacious grounds and ample sur- roundings make possible greater elegance and comfort. These homes have been built as substantially as would be required for the rigors of a northern climate, many of them of brick or stone or concrete. Every modern conveniece has been installed and the landscape artist has utilized Florida's semitropical trees and foliage to give them appro- priate setting. Jacksonville is a city of homes far above the average in their architectural attractiveness and quite in keeping with the pros- perity of their owners and of the city itself.
BUSINESS EXPANSION
The growth of the business sections has occupied many blocks which before 1901 were the sites of the fine residences of the earlier Jack- sonville. The shopping district extended originally along a few blocks on Bay street, parallel to the river and one block from it. The erection of the postoffice and Federal building one block farther from the river, on Forsyth street, was followed by many of the banking and large
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commercial interests, and eventually made that thoroughfare the Wall street of Jacksonville and of Florida, the center of their most impor- tant financial developments.
Later expansion has extended the retail district several blocks farther from the river and it has gathered about what is called the St. James building, an immense mercantile and business structure which occupies the entire city block of the famous old St. James Hotel, the destination of tourists from all parts of the world, before its destruction in 1901. This has established, not a new business center, but a wide expansion of the older, and the blocks between are filling rapidly with mercantile and office buildings.
EXPANDING VALUES
The legitimate increases in values of Jacksonville real estate since the fire of 1901, have seemed phenomenal. If they have appeared unwarranted, it was because the remarkable permanent growth of the city has been lost sight of. At times they have suggested the tales of boom towns in the west which ended in disaster. The devel- opment of Jacksonville has been upon the actual foundation of present intrinsic worth and of future and speedy appreciation. Seem- ingly exorbitant values for central business property liave been justi- fied by actual returns from the property when improved with office buildings or stores or warehouses. Increasing population has created new businesses and enlarged old establishments. New enterprises have come with astonishing rapidity demanding accommodations. The growing importance of the city as a distributing center has added to the demand. At the present rate of increase, the office business of Jacksonville alone justifies the erection of one new ten to twelve-story building each year with accommodations for one hun- dred to one hundred and twenty-five firms or individual occupants. This is in addition to the demands for manufacture and warehouse facilities outside the down-town business sections.
JACKSONVILLE BANKS
The banks of Jacksonville have recorded its growth through the years as faithfully as the delicate instruments of the Weather Bureau have told the story of the temperatures, the rainfall and the winds. They have by their wise conservation exercised a restraining influ- ence on speculative tendencies which the remarkable growth of the
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city and state might have fostered. They have encouraged develop- ment and they have done much to guide it along safe and conservative lines.
The Jacksonville Clearing House Association includes in its mem- bership ten strong institutions, five of them national banks and five operated under charters from the state. There is also one bank owned largely and operated by negro capital, which is doing a safe and increasing business. These institutions are housed in substantial quar- ters, some of them elegant in their appointments, and in this respect they are not surpassed by any banking houses outside the largest financial centers in the country.
The commercial growth of the eity is at least suggested by the records of the Clearing House during the past fourteen years:
Year.
Total Clearings.
Percentages of Increase.
1899.
$ 12,642,953
1900
12,733,048
.007
1901
16,757,772
31.6
1902
18,937,304
13.
1903
26,112,716
37.6
1904.
43,265,462
65.6
1905
60,000,000
38.6
1906
66,684,098
11.
1907
76,046,049
14.1
1908
73,194,128
-4.
1909
92,228,527
26.
1910
124,657,072
35.1
1911
146,740,819
17.7
1912
168,442,389
14.8
The increase in the total of the clearings of 1912 over those of 1899, was $155,799,436, or 1,232 percent. In only three months of 1912 did the total clearings fail to exceed those of the entire year of 1899. Comparing the clearings of 1912 with those of 1902, a period of ten years, the increase was $149,505,085, or approximately 790 percent.
The conditions of Jacksonville's banks on the first of July, 1913, showed aggregate capital, surplus and undivided profits exceeding five and a half million dollars, deposits of about twenty-five millions and total resources in excess of thirty millions.
* Approximate; exact figures not obtainable.
** Decrease as result of panicky conditions throughout the country.
VIEW OF JACKSONVILLE'S NEW BUSINESS DISTRICT
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JACKSONVILLE'S TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES
Jacksonville's greatest asset, her largest promise of future and permanent commercial importance is in the splendid water course that flows past her doors. It marks her municipal limits on the south and cast. Seven miles of deep water front lie within four miles of her business center. The St. Johns river connects the city by deep water navigation with the Atlantic highways, twenty-seven miles away, and a line of steam passenger and freight vessels plies as far up the river as Sanford, 150 miles distant. Lighter draft boats go as far as Lake Washington, nearly three hundred miles south.
The greatest commercial centers of the world, with few, if any, exceptions, are located on deep water. Jacksonville possesses and is rapidly developing most of the natural advantages that have made commercially great the ports of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Galveston on this side of the ocean, and London, Liverpool and Hamburg on the other side.
The development of the port of Jacksonville from a frontier set- tlement stretching along a sluggish stream, to a metropolitan city handling every year a deep water commerce worth millions of dollars over a splendidly charted and buoyed channel, is a story of more than passing interest. This development has made possible the establish- ment here of lumber mills cutting a million feet a day; it has made Jacksonville the third largest manufacturing place of fertilizers in the country and the greatest depot for fertilizer material in the world; it has made this city the commercial capital of Florida and of south- ern Georgia by securing the lowest transportation rates from and to the world's markets; it has helped to make the city the greatest center of naval stores operations, and the shipping point for 360,000,000 feet of lumber and 125,000 tons of phosphate rock in 1912.
Making connections here with this water transportation are five great rail trunk lines, with an aggregate mileage of sixteen thousand miles, and these lines have spent here within the past few years more than three million dollars for terminal and warehouse facilities. The vessels carrying this water commerce in 1912 numbered more than thirty-four hundred with a total tonnage of almost three million, nine hundred thousand tons.
BUILDING OF THE PORT OF JACKSONVILLE
To make possible this enormous traffic with the certainty of its enormous expansion, has involved the expenditure of approximately
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six million dollars of appropriations by the Federal Congress through the last twenty years. Originally the St. Johns river had a depth of only nine or ten feet over its bar at high tide with a constantly shift- ing channel. The construction of a system of jetties at the mouth, dredging and building retaining walls to scour the channel have given a depth of twenty-four feet at low tide, and twenty-nine feet at high tide from the city's wharves to the Atlantic. Under the direc- tion of United States engineers operations now going forward financed by Government appropriation, will increase these depths to thirty and thirty-five feet, respectively, by the close of the year 1914.
This means that Jacksonville is the only port south of Norfolk on the Atlantic seaboard, where according to existing plans which have the endorsement of the United States Government, the largest ships will be able to enter and leave at any stage of the tides. It has already the distinction of being the most southerly port on the east coast of the United States where deep draught vessels can now take both cargo and fuel.
This development of the port has been made possible only by the consistent and persistent efforts of Jacksonville's business men and organizations, urging upon Congress the importance of such devel- opment to the commercial interests not alone of the great southeast, but of the nation itself.
Three lines of coastwise steamships connect Jacksonville with the great cities and markets on the Atlantic seaboard by eight to ten sailings a week. They afford the most favorable freight rates north and south. Regularly established lines of freight steamers give eight to ten sailings each month to and from Hamburg, Rotterdam, Bre- men, Liverpool and other European ports. Besides these, numerous tramp steamers and sailing vessels are constantly entering and clear- ing for all parts of the world, adding largely to the totals of tonnage.
THE SOCIAL SIDE
Jacksonville's social side is in keeping with her commercial devel- opment. Ninety churches, a good school system, richly appointed clubhouses and theaters, splendidly paved streets and avenues, parks and playgrounds, successful ownership of municipal waterworks sys- tem and electric lighting and power plant, well stocked stores and shops and all the conveniences that belong to twentieth century living are here.
One of the city's chief assets is a splendidly efficient fire depart-
RESIDENCE DISTRICT. RIVERSIDE AVENUE. JACKSONVILLE
RIVERSIDE PARK, ONE OF JACKSONVILLE'S FINEST PLAYGROUNDS
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VIEW UP THE ST. JOHNS RIVER, SHOWING RAILROAD BRIDGE
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CLYDE LINERS TO NEW YORK AT WHARVES IN JACKSONVILLE
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ment, equipped with the latest improvements in motor-moved appa- ratus and manned by a thoroughly disciplined force of fire fighters. The effectiveness of this department is measured by a smaller annual fire loss than is credited to any other city of its size in the country, and it is recognized by the granting of extremely low insurance rates.
An energetic department of public health has reduced the annual death rate within the past three years by nearly twenty per cent, and the reports of the last municipal year showed a death rate among the residents of Jacksonville of 14.8 for each one thousand of the perma- nent population. The rate for the white population was lower than this, or 14.1, making it one of the most desirable cities in the entire country from the sanitary viewpoint.
No city, north or south, has a more attractive present nor a more brilliant promise for the future.
CHAPTER XXII TAMPA
BY JAMES E. MEARS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, TAMPA BOARD OF TRADE
I T is doubtful if a dreamer like Hernando De Soto, when he set sail from Tampa Bay in 1539, fancied that he was taking farewell of a section that some day in the distant future would be so rich that the gold taken from the Indians by Cortez would be insignificant in comparison; that centuries later the descendants of pioneers from Castile, from Aragon and France and England, following the course of least resistance would build upon these shores a mighty city rivaling Carthage of old; that where then were virgin forests known only to the red men, would some day be fields of vegetables and groves of golden fruit ample to feed the peo- ple of his beloved Spain.
From the departure of De Soto, to 1825, when the United States Government established Fort Brooke-named for a gallant Virgin- ian soldier-as a protection against the Indians, who then were nu- merous and hostile to the whites in southern Florida, the history of Tampa-an Indian name interpreted as "split wood for quick fires" -- is inconsequential. The Government in 1847 gave forty acres of land to Hillsborough county as a town site and this marked the beginning of the city, which remained an unimportant village for a generation.
Fort Brooke was taken by the Confederate forces early in the Civil war and was held by them until its close, when it was once more occupied by two companies of Federal troops, which remained until 1882. During the Spanish-American war Tampa, because of its proximity to Spanish possessions in this hemisphere, was the chief port of embarkation to Cuba, and for nearly a year a large part of the United States army was mobilized here.
TAMPA'S RESOURCES
It was in the early nineties when Tampa opened its eyes to its own wonderful resources and possibilities, put aside its swaddling clothes
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and began the march of progress that leads to greatness. The adver- tising that the section received from the newspaper correspondents and the army men quartered here during the Spanish-American war, spread the knowledge of the city to every part of the United States. It acquainted the people of the whole country with the wonderful climate, the long growing seasons and the natural resources of the section. Tourists, homeseekers and investors followed quickly in the trail of the army, to see for themselves the remarkable country of which they had heard such glowing descriptions, many of which they imagined were the tales of some Munchausen. Delight, not disap- pointment, was their reward. They found what had been told them, a good harbor, a delightful all-year climate, which makes the young happy and the old young; standing timber sufficient to supply the country with yellow pine and turpentine for several generations; lands capable of producing enormous yields of citrus fruits and almost every other crop that has its home in the temperate zone; and enough phosphate to make fertile the world for ages.
Floridians joined hands with the men from the north and west and other parts of the south, as in Revolutionary days, and worked in harmony to build a great city, where it would be a joy to live and work and grow old. Strong men have continued to pour in until Tampa is now the most important port on the west coast of Florida and already it takes front rank among the cities on the gulf.
POPULATION AND GROWTH
Tampa's population in 1890 was 5,332, and the 1910 census showed 38,524, an increase in the twenty years of 596 percent. Not included in these figures were the people of the suburbs and of West Tampa, a distinct municipality separated from the parent city only by an imaginary line. The population of these in 1910 added to the residents of Tampa, would increase the total to 53,000. The percentage of negroes, who are utilized for common labor, is smaller than in most southern cities. The foreign population, an industrious, peaceable and law-abiding element which directly and indirectly has aided materially in the development of the city, is mainly from the Latin countries. A population drawn from every section of the United States and from foreign countries makes for a tolerance of all manner of religious and political views, and this is true in Tampa.
Local pride supported by evidence, is a reason for proclaiming that Tampa is one of the best cities in the south in which to live. It
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PHOSPHATE SHIPPING, TAMPA
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is a city of health-the annual death rate is but 8.5 for each one thousand of the resident inhabitants. It is a city of sunshine, flow- ers, education, refinement, culture, religion, hospitality, homes, clubs, theaters and all other luxuries and conveniences that are found in every modern, progressive city today. The thermometer seldom regis- ters above 92° in the middle of the day, and the maximum, 96°, has been reached but four times since the establishment of the United States Weather Bureau here, more than twenty years ago.
PHOSPHATES, LUMBER AND ORANGES
Tampa is the commercial metropolis of the southern half of Florida. Every acre that is developed in this vast section adds to the prosperity of this city, increases the business of its one hundred and twenty-seven wholesale houses, which are now doing an annual busi- ness exceeding thirty-five million dollars, and builds up its banks. Thousands of families who are settling in Tampa's trade territory every year, are making land that never before knew the plow or the hoe, to produce crops of vegetables and golden fruit that rival the richness of the Nile valley. Orange and grapefruit culture is increas- ing by leaps and bounds, as these fruits become each year more and more a necessity among the people of the United States, to whom Florida growers are demonstrating the superiority of their product over that of California.
TAMPA'S DEEP WATER FACILITIES
As Florida leads the world in its phosphate deposits, so will Tampa retain its supremacy as a phosphate shipping port, more than one- half of the world's supply being in Tampa's trade territory. The one hundred and fifty billion feet of standing timber in this territory and in southern Florida, is finding its way to the markets of the world through Tampa's port, and this trade is increasing annually.
Tampa's deep water harbor-twenty-four feet to the gulf-its modern facilities for loading and unloading vessels-a four-thousand ton ship can be loaded between sunrise and sunset of the same day- and its enormous shipments of phosphate and lumber have contrib- uted to the city's growth and prosperity.
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