If you’ve marveled at some of the loveliest and quirkiest homes in Atlantic Beach, or if you’ve thought certain houses in the area seemed more like natural formations, chances are, you were admiring the architecture of . To refer to Morgan’s architecture of the 1960s through the 1980s with that current catch-all phrase, “mid-century modern,” misses his conceptual blending of architecture with environment. When Morgan’s designs don’t reflect natural shapes and contours, they reflect older human habitations that do. He has crafted museums that echo Pre-Columbian terraced mounds and savings banks inspired by the ancient American Indian city of Cahokia …

It’s one of the most significant historical structures in Jacksonville, but no one knows how old it is and no one built it. While today the , a popular site for wedding photos and outdoor summer movie screenings, is one of Jacksonville’s most beloved locations and very likely the oldest living being in the city’s 874.6 consolidated square miles, it owes its continued existence to false prophecies, legends, and lies. In all the gorgeous gargantuan tree’s documented history, the supposed facts have often contradicted each other. Though Treaty Oak is featured as one of 17 trees in Jeffrey Meyer’s 2001 …

“West Ashley Street,” sang the in 1927, was the only place you could “ever lose these awful Jacksonville Blues.” That same year,  recorded a mysterious ragtime blues guitarist named playing “Ashley Street Blues,” with singing, “I’m a heartbroken woman with the Ashley Street Blues.”  recorded another version of “Jacksonville Blues” in 1928. She was “red hot” in Atlanta, she sang, “But the man I love lives down in Jacksonville.” West Ashley was the central thoroughfare for , a mostly black town after the , a slave plantation earlier in the 19th century, and during Jacksonville’s brutal Jim Crow years, one …

In 1993, the City of Jacksonville had the Clara White Mission in its crosshairs. Mayor Ed Austin’s River City Renaissance plan sought to demolish the Clara White Mission along with the nearly 50 square blocks of  it bulldozed, but a young leader named Ju’Coby Pittman, the Mission’s fourth president, got in the way. Today, the , located at 613 West Ashley Street in the heart of LaVilla, is 111 years old. Its founder, , ran the Mission for 70 years. Along the way, people compared her to Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Jane Addams and Jesus. She wasn’t quite five feet tall, …

The first time I met Walter Whetstone, he invited me into his home and told me to look around, while he sat in a chair on the sidewalk and watched traffic. Though it was the middle of summer and unbearably hot, Walter wore a suit and tie. I’d wondered countless times what this strange block in Northern  could possibly be. From a balcony hung mannequin arms, and the innards of a piano adorned a brick wall. An adjacent building bore barber poles and brightly colored masks, while tall tin sheets emblazoned with quotes from famous architects rose in the yard that …