Tallahassee ModerneResponding to a tremendous growth in population between 1910 and 1940, Tallahassee/Leon County constructed a new set of structures to house public services. The website highlights those buildings the city and county hoped would create efficiency and evoke modernity. There will also be a presentation and tour on October 24, 2015 that is free and open to the public.
Tallahassee Moderne was sponsored by the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation, The Florida Heritage Foundation, and the Historical Administration and Public History Program of the History Department at Florida State University. This website was created with the aid of graduate students from the History Department at Florida State University: Amy Drewel Coale, James R. McAllister, Sarah Patterson, Kent Peacock, and Allyson Stanton, and College of Education graduate student Sally R. Watkins. Several are enrolled in the History Department's Historical Administration and Public History Program run by Prof. Jennifer Koslow. National Register of Historic Places: Meridian RoadLocation: linear resource roughly John Hancock Dr. to Georgia State line
Summary: Meridian Road is nominated to the National Register for significance on the local level under criterion A in the area of Transportation. Meridian Road is associated with the growth and development of Leon County, Florida, which for a time in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, was the center of cotton production in the state. The road served as one of the major local conduits to move agricultural products from the county's plantations and farms to market in the capital city of Tallahassee and to shipping points on the Gulf of Mexico. In 1824, as a new territory of the United States, a Prime Meridian Marker was placed at the southeast corner of Tallahassee, from which all land surveys in Florida derive their origin. Originating at the Meridian Marker, Benjamin Clements surveyed the longitudinal north/south Meridian Road in 1824. This was one of the first roads surveyed in Florida. This major thoroughfare continues to connect the rural areas of Leon County to the City of Tallahassee. Public History students from Florida State University's History Department helped research this nomination. This exhibit was organized by the Newberry Library's Dr. William M. Scholl Center for Family and Community History and the Chicago Historical Society. It was made possible with major funding provided in part by The Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency that fosters innovation, leadership and a lifetime of learning. Generous support was also provided by The Chicago Reader and Dr. and Mrs. Tapas K. Das Gupta.
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Tallahassee Civil Rights Memorial SidewalkIn the Spring of 2010, the Director of Tallahassee Community Redevelopment Agency (TCRA) (a city/county agency) invited me to participate in a citizen’s advisory committee to design a Memorial sidewalk at the corner of Monroe and Jefferson streets in downtown Tallahassee to commemorate the city’s Civil Rights history. The TCRA chose this site after it was learned that the Seminole tribe had received permission to demolish a building along this stretch. The building was the site of the five-and-dime store, McCrory’s, which had an entrance for whites along Monroe and a side entrance for blacks along Jefferson. The building itself had been so altered as to make it ineligible to nominate to the National Register of Historic Places. A staff member of the Tallahassee-Leon County Planning Department, Dan Donovan, came up with an imaginative idea. Memorialize civil rights history in the space where it had happened; memorialize the pickets on the street in front of the store. In discussing Tallahassee’s civil rights history, members of the citizens committee felt that two events needed to be set into the sidewalk: the bus boycott and the sit-ins. Tallahassee was the site of the second major bus boycott in the United States, demonstrating to the world that the events in Montgomery were not an aberration. In the spring of 1960, students engaged in sit-ins. In an unprecedented move, those in Tallahassee chose jail over bail. In working on this advisory committee for the next six months, I worked to find primary source materials that could be used by FSU’s Master Craftsman Studio to incorporate into their designs. (The Studio has crafted the sidewalk out of terrazzo.) Working with Althemese Barnes, Director of the John G. Riley Center/Museum of African American History and Culture, I drafted the text (which the Studio has rendered in bronze) that will describe these events and their meaning. The project is complete and the sidewalk has be laid at the corner of East Jefferson Street and Monroe Street in downtown Tallahassee.
Smokey Hollow Historic American Landscape Survey Project
The National Park Service established the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) program to provide a process for the systematic documentation of historic American landscapes. A HALS records historic landscapes in the United States through measured and interpretive drawings, written histories, and large-format black and white photographs and color photographs. The National park Service provides professional guidance on preparing a HALS and, if accepted, the HALS is preserved in the Library of Congress for posterity and to provide access to the general public.
Why prepare a HALS for Smokey Hollow? From the 1890s to the 1960s, Smokey Hollow was home to working-class and middle-class African Americans in Tallahassee. Florida’s state government removed houses, stores, and churches to make-way for post-World War II urban renewal projects. As part of a twenty-first century project to redevelop the area, a project titled the New Cascades Park, the city of Tallahassee will tell the story of Smokey Hollow through spirit houses, interpretive signs, and a HALS. Formal historical documentation provides the crucial foundation for commemoration. Students from Florida State University aided in the archival research for this project and conducted oral histories with former residents. Dr. Koslow worked with Dr. Anthony Dixon to write the historical narrative for the project. |