Jacksonville Apartment Reviews

Read Jacksonville apartment reviews. Renters share their first hand experiences from living in apartments you want to know about. These apartment reviews help you choose wisely before you rent.

Jacksonville Information

In the early 1820?s, city founder Isaiah D. Hart decided to lay out a town for the small river crossing. Not knowing where to begin, the bay tree by the market was selected as the starting point for the survey, thus beginning Downtown?s layout with Bay and Market Streets. An historic marker designates the location of the first survey point, and the city layout remains much the same today.

By the time Florida achieved statehood in 1845, Jacksonville was an important port for timber and cotton trades. The city was occupied and burned several times during the Civil War, but by the early 1880?s Downtown Jacksonville had recovered and was thriving as a winter tourist destination. Hailed as the ?Winter City in a Summer Land,? Jacksonville drew up to four times its summer population in the temperate winter months.

Jacksonville?s recovery from the Civil War was interrupted by a short-lived disaster when the city was struck by yellow fever in 1888. Board of Health announcements caused panic and the epidemic left Downtown vacant as the population and most of the government evacuated. Again, Jacksonville recovered quickly, and in the 1890?s, Downtown and LaVilla became a pulsing regional center for African-American and Cuban culture.

In 1898, a banker and Confederate war hero, C. C. Hemming, donated $20,000 to erect Downtown?s most famous statue, a Confederate soldier, in Hemming Plaza. The statue, which represents an unnamed soldier from the Jacksonville Light Infantry in the War Between the States, eternally faces south.

Three years later disaster struck Jacksonville again when, shortly after noon on May 3, 1901, a spark from a cookstove ignited piles of moss drying at a nearby mattress factory. The raging fire quickly spread from block to block, and by the time it was brought under control at 8:30 that night, 2,368 buildings had been destroyed. Ten hotels, 23 churches and nearly all the Downtown public buildings burned, but Hemming?s Confederate statue survived, despite being in the hottest part of the fire. Rebuilding began immediately, and The Great Fire of 1901, while devastating for Downtown Jacksonville, sparked a renaissance that became the foundation of Downtown today.