The Financial Times [of London] according to itself, is one of the world’s leading business news organizations.  The newspaper published in its House and Home section a  lovely article, Perfectly Preserved, which features Jacksonville’s avant garde Riverside and Avondale neighborhoods.  The community was  naturally delighted.  I was impressed because Flipside Florida‘s whole premise of Jacksonville as America’s Logistics Center is neatly summarized in the following passage:

The city is defined by the St Johns River, which bisects it en route to the nearby Atlantic coast. The mild climate and access to the ocean have made it an important centre for the U.S. Navy and for commercial shipping and it has attracted the back-office operations of several national financial institutions. A logistical centre, Jacksonville is also home to CSX Corporation, the dominant rail company in the eastern U.S.

Obviously a well-researched article, it is the work of one Henry Hamman, a Financial Times contributing writer,  living in Sewanee, Tenn.  This seemed a curious arrangement, so I phoned Hamman to ask him how an FT contributor, who lives in Tennessee, came to learn of Riverside and Avondale. He’s a very affable man, tells great stories and has led quite an interesting life.

Hamman, at one point in his life, was Bureau Chief for Radio Free Europe in London. I’m not exactly sure how he ended up in Miami, but there he was, a Financial Times correspondent covering sporadic South Florida events.  He named a few, from the Noreiga trial and the murder of Gianni Versace to hurricanes and everglades. All the while, he was working on his doctorate in International Relations at the University of Miami, and also as a UM administrator.

As it turns out, he is also an avid architectural buff and a proponent of the New Urbanism architectural movement, which stresses urban reinvestment over suburban sprawl. He has a penchant for Prairie School and Craftsman styling. He particularly enjoyed the resources available at University of Miami’s School of Architecture and made great use of its Archives of the New Urbanism.

Hamman is also president of Sociocybernetics, a computer research company founded around his  patented communications software. UPDATE: Sociocybernetics was actually started to study the application of cybernetic theory to social organizations. Our patent came out of work we were doing on computer-assisted negotiation, and I [Hamman] am a co-inventor only. Through the patenting process in New York City, he became friendly with Joe Kincart, an intellectual property attorney, who now lives in Avondale and works for Johnson and Johnson’s Vistakon as a patent attorney. In a phone chat between the two, Kincart raved on about his cosmopolitan neighborhood:

It’s the closest thing to Greenwich Village you’ll find in Florida!

Any journalist will probably tell you it’s not easy finding  great resources right away in a new city, but fortunately, Hamman had Kincart AND Riverside Avondale Preservation (RAP). These neighborhoods have had a National Trust for Historic Preservation designation since 2000, so there’s plenty of historic information available. Hamman also had the help of long-time Riverside resident Myrtice Craig, who he describes as a lovely and gracious woman, who knows just about everybody. [Local events and news are posted on RAP's blog.]

All told, Riverside and Avondale, which lie contiguously along the bank of the St Johns River, comprise a collection of about 5,000 buildings, of which about three-quarters are protected by historic designation. Architectural styles range from late Victorian to craftsman bungalows, colonial revival and prairie school, the design tradition of America’s pre-eminent 20th-century architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Henry is back in Sewanee, Tenn. His 15-acre spread is named The Tick Farm. He tells  me the area is awful, it’ s very unscenic and there’s no reason whatsoever to move there.   I suspect  his disdain for Sewanee  is a self-devised plot to prevent other people from moving to the area and ruining everything. Update: FYI, the weather in Sewanee is horrible, too — we had snow yesterday, the ground is soggy, and the deer are eating all the foliage.

Hat-Tip to Brother in arms, Jon Singleton, for posting Perfectly Preserved on twitter.

Henry James Klutho, a prominent Prairie School architect, practically redesigned Jacksonville single-handedly after the Great Fire of 1901. And that is a post for another day!

Update: Just in case I don’t get to a post about Klutho any time soon, “The Architecture of Henry John Klutho, The Prairie School in Jacksonville” by Robert C. Broward is available through  The Jacksonville Historical Society.

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Tags | City of Jacksonville, U.S. Navy