In the fall of 1999, scaffolding surrounded the three-story building while workers replaced old wood and added new stucco. About two years before, The Palms had installed central heat and air-conditioning.

Hurley Winkler and I look at the Xeroxed and binder-clipped history of the building the housekeeper shows us. The “history” claims the building was once the Armory, though the Armory was located just south on the same block. It also claims The Palms was constructed after the Great Fire of 1901, yet survived the 1901 fire.

Portions of walls of the original Duval County Courthouse, built in the 1840s, decimated by fire in the Civil War, rebuilt in the 1880s, did survive the Great Fire and were rebuilt into the Duval County Armory in 1903, serving various government functions from 1916, when a newer Armory was built to the north, until 2003, when its latest reconstruction as the Lanier Building, named for Confederate poet Sidney Lanier, was demolished to make room for a parking lot.

But the Palms was never the Armory. It shared the block, just to the north. Other transformations ensue.

Hurley and I become brother and sister. Our cousin Morris is coming to town. He never stays with family. He loves urban landscapes. He has small needs, just enough to set up base and move out into the city. He doesn’t want to be near the ocean, because the ocean, inexplicably, makes him angry. He’ll be in town sometime in August, we’re not sure when.

The housekeeper is kind. She’s fascinated by the building. She likes thinking of how much humanity The Palms has hosted. She can’t book rooms in advance, but smalls are usually available. She gives us the key to Room 207 to see how Morris might like it.

(photo by Hurley Winkler)

Small it is. The halls on each floor descend carpeted declines toward back exit doors. Room 207 comes behind curves and walls that crevasse inward and waits all alone by the back exit. The room’s big enough for the bed and the closet. There’s a television. The window is boarded shut but covered with a spotted poster of floral design. A string hangs from a bare bulb above the bed.

In 2002, tenants heard “struggling and gagging” coming from an unidentified room and one man said he heard “someone being slammed against the wall and then loud choking sounds.” The man said he went back to bed after hearing the confrontation and was surprised when management and the police pronounced a homicide the next morning.

Though burglaries and assaults occurred across the decades at The Palms, the building is best known for the 1983 arson that killed seven tenants.

In late March, Larry James Bana was evicted from his room at The Palms after a disagreement over his rent. Bana moved out, but he was angry. The Palms had done him wrong and he couldn’t let a wrong go unrighted.

So just after midnight on March 24, 1983, Bana set The Palms on fire. It wasn’t the first time the hotel had burned, but six people died that night and a seventh four days later. The Palms had provided no fire extinguishers and no smoke detectors.

(photo by Hurley Winkler)

During the 1999 renovations, Jim Gray, Night Manager at The Palms, first heard about the 1983 fire and decided to move from the third to the ground floor.

He liked living on the third floor but said he had “looked out the window and thought, ‘Boy, that’s a long jump!’”

(photo by Hurley Winkler)

Hurley and I are fairly sure our eccentric cousin Morris will be happy with a small room at the back of The Palms. Morris is good at experiencing whatever the world can give and coming out alright. He loves urban landscapes at their grittiest. He likes old places that have imbibed much life and survived. He soaks something up from them. The Palms has smoke detectors now. And The Palms inhabits the corner of Adams and Market Streets, two blocks, thankfully, from Ocean Street. Morris hates the ocean. Even the word makes him angry.

(photo by Hurley Winkler)

Article by Tim Gilmore of Jax Psycho Geo. Tim Gilmore is the author of Devil in the Baptist Church: Bob Gray’s Unholy Trinity (2016), Central Georgia Schizophrenia (2016), The Mad Atlas of Virginia King (2015), Ghost Story / Love Song (2015), In Search of Eartha White (2014), The Ocean Highway at Night (2014), Stalking Ottis Toole: A Southern Gothic (2013), Doors in the Light and the Water: The Life and Collected Work of Empty Boat (2013), This Kind of City: Ghost Stories and Psychological Landscapes (2012) and Ghost Compost: Strange Little Stories, illustrated by Nick Dunkenstein (2013). He is the creator of Jax Psycho Geo (www.jaxpsychogeo.com). His two volumes of poetry are Horoscopes for Goblins: Poems, 2006-2009 and Flights of Crows: Poems, 2002-2006. His audio poetry album Waiting in the Lost Rooms is available at https://eat-magazine.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-in-the-lost-rooms. He teaches at Florida State College at Jacksonville. He is the organizer of the Jax by Jax literary arts festival. www.jaxbyjax.com