Names you Recognize Today
This tour is under construction.
Content Provided by: Joshua Wilkerson
This Queen Anne with elements of Tudor and Spanish Colonial Revival styles was constructed in 1909 for Dr. Horace Drew, physician and grandson of Jacksonville pioneer, Columbus Drew.
Take note to the homes half-timbered eaves that are clearly Tudor Revival, its hexagonal side porch and the opposing tower fit the asymmetry of Queen Anne, and its porch parapet, third-story tower arches, angular blocks, and clay roof tiles exemplify Floridian “Spanish Colonial” or Mediterranean Revival.
The Drew family lived here thru the 1930s. The Mears family occupied the home in the 1950s and early-1960s, the house was abandoned and became known as the “haunted house” between 1967 and 1973. In March 1970, eleven students from Ribault High School ventured into the decrepit mansion on the evening of Friday the 13th.
This home is currently under renovation and will be used as a commercial space when it is done.
This Colonial Revival home was built in 1901 for William Barnett, founder of the Barnett Bank chain. The home was designed by Knoxville architect Leon Beaver, designer of the Barnett Bank Building. The formal façade of the house is dominated by a two-tier veranda, which features grouped Ionic columns. The second-story columns and capitals are very slightly smaller than their first-story counterparts, a visual truck that enhances the lofty perspective of the façade. A portion of the widow’s walk, which originally surmounted the flat ridge of the roof, can still be seen on the west side. With the exception of the enclosing of the part of the side veranda, the building remains relatively unchanged and is a splendid survivor of the post-Fire residential building boom.
The Barnett estate sold the Springfield showplace and many of its Victorian furnishings, such as a 12-foot-tall bookcase and a heavy oak claw-footed desk, to Solomon Lodge No. 20 in 1941, and remains an active Masonic lodge. The lodge left most of the first floor and the Barnett furniture in its original condition but converted the second floor from a series of bedrooms to one large meeting hall, adding bathrooms and a dressing room, according to a Times-Union story in 1999.
Solomon Lodge, name after King Solomon, is the city's oldest Masonic organization, founded in January 1849.
