How Jacksonv. Old Money Built a River of Mansions and Then Watched It Burn: Riverside & Ortega

By eight o'clock that evening, there was almost nothing left of Jacksonville to burn. The fire started a little after noon on May 3rd, 1901, in a mattress factory, when an ember drifted into a rack of drying Spanish moss. Eight hours later, 146 city blocks were gone — the third-largest urban fire in American history. And the families with the most to lose drew the only lesson that mattered: they moved west, to a quiet stretch of riverbank, and built the grandest run of mansions Florida had ever seen. Fifty great houses on a street people called The Row. Today, two are left. This is the story of what took the rest. Sources: https://www.floridamemory.com/learn/e... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_F... https://www.metrojacksonville.com/art...