Flowers Baking Company

825 Myrtle Avenue

The Flowers Baking Company plant in the Grand Park neighborhood is likely Jacksonville’s oldest continuously operated wholesale bakery. Its origins trace back to 1936, when John Joseph Schopp, Jr. founded the Jax-Maid Baking Company at 1185 Kings Road in Durkeeville. Located adjacent to the S-Line Rail Corridor, Jax-Maid was one of at least three major wholesale bakeries that once filled the neighborhood with the aroma of freshly baked bread during the early 20th century. A native of New York, Schopp, Jr. had previously served as the manager of the Ward Baking Company in Springfield.

In 1948, Jax-Maid was acquired by the Flowers Baking Company. Founded in 1919 by brothers William Howard and Joseph Hampton Flowers in Thomasville, Georgia, Flowers Baking began its expansion outside Thomasville with the acquisition of Tally Maid Bakery in Tallahassee in 1937.

After purchasing Jax-Maid, Flowers relocated its Jacksonville operation to a larger facility at 825 Myrtle Avenue during the 1950s. The company operated at this site until 1965, when it constructed its current 127,531-square-foot wholesale bakery at 2261 West 30th Street. Today, the only remnant of the earlier Durkeeville bakeries is a portion of the south exterior brick wall of the Myrtle Avenue plant.

In 2013, Flowers further expanded its reach by acquiring most of the bread brands from the former Hostess Brands, including Wonder Bread and 20 closed Hostess bakeries.

Now in its 89th year of operation, the Jacksonville bakery continues to produce a wide array of fresh and frozen baked goods, ranging from breads, buns, and rolls to snack cakes and pastries. With 2024 sales totaling $5.1 billion, Flowers is recognized as one of the nation’s leading producers of packaged bakery products.

Southern Baking Company (Dorsey-O’Neil Bakery)

31 Warren Street

In 1914, the Dorsey-O’Neil Bakery established its wholesale facility near the intersection of Main and Warren Streets. Later renamed the Dorsey Baking Company, the bakery underwent significant expansions during the 1920s. These included a redesign of the building into a Mediterranean Revival-style structure, a transformation led by Chicago architect Richard Griesser in 1922 and under the direction of New York architect J. Edwin Hopkins in 1925.

By 1926, the facility spanned an entire city block and had become the largest and most modern bakery in the Southern United States. It boasted a daily output of 100,000 loaves of bread and cakes, including the Betsy Ross Bread brand. Advertisements from the time emphasized that Betsy Ross Bread was made with creamery butter and rich cream milk. The bakery’s fermentation room faced North Main Street, while its ovens were located on the eastern side of the plant, along North Hubbard Street.

That same year, the bakery was acquired by the Southern Baking Company of New York City. Founded just two years earlier in 1924, Southern Baking was aggressively expanding across the Southeast and had recently purchased the O.A. Seybold Baking Company of Miami. Known for its “O Boy” white bread brand, Seybold was such a recognizable name in Florida that by 1935, the Jacksonville bakery was renamed the Seybold Baking Company.

Southern Baking also built additional bakeries in Miami, Tampa, and Daytona Beach in 1926. Collectively, these facilities produced more than 12 million loaves annually. During the Great Depression, the company was acquired by the Columbia Baking Company of Atlanta. In 1958, it changed hands again, becoming part of Southern Bakeries, Inc.

The Jacksonville plant ceased operations in the early 1970s. It was later repurposed by the Duval County school system as a book depository. In the mid-1990s, the historic structure was integrated into the campus of the adjacent Springfield Middle School.

Ward Baking Company

2401 Walnut Street

The Ward Baking Company began as a small bakery in New York City in 1849. It was founded by James Ward and his son, Hugh Ward, who emigrated from Belfast, Ireland. By 1925, the company had grown into the largest commercial bakery in the United States, distributing baked goods throughout much of the Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest.

Pioneering large-scale baking techniques, Ward Baking Company was among the first to use mechanized production lines. Its Wonder Bread brand became one of the earliest factory-sliced breads in the country, revolutionizing the way bread was produced and consumed.

In 1926, the company expanded to Jacksonville, opening a new bakery at 2401 Walnut Street in the Springfield neighborhood. W.M. Lorenz served as the general manager of the plant. Just four years later, in Illinois, the company invented the now-iconic Twinkie snack cake.

During World War II, the Jacksonville facility played a vital role by supplying bread and rolls to nearby United States Naval installations. By 1965, the company’s local footprint included bakery thrift stores located at 2505 Liberty Street, 1141 South Edgewood Avenue, and 2763 West Beaver Street.

Over the following decades, ownership of the company changed several times: it was acquired by ITT in 1968, sold to Ralston Purina in 1984, and then to Interstate Bakeries Corporation in 1995. In 2009, the business was ultimately rebranded as Hostess Brands.

The Jacksonville bakery ceased operations in the early 1980s. In the early 2000s, the historic plant was demolished, and the site was redeveloped into a parking lot for employees of the neighboring Swisher International headquarters complex.

Article by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com