DECLINE OF THE LINE

This building once housed a saloon in the red light district that was owned and operated by black businessman George Stevens.

By 1905, the nearby train station had become a congested destination where virtually every rail carload to or from the Florida peninsula passed through, partially due to Atlantic Coast Line Railroad passenger and freight trains from the north and Midwest being handed off to the Florida East Coast Railway. To overcome this problem, Atlantic Coast Line and Florida East Coast created the jointly-owned Atlantic and East Coast Terminal Company with $500,000 in capital stock to connect and serve their railroad operations with support facilities such as warehouses, elevators, and wharves.

A row of warehouses that were constructed along an A&EC; Terminal Company railroad spur that once ran down the center of Houston Street.

With its establishment, the Atlantic and East Coast Terminal Company became an early urban renewal attempt to eliminate Ward Street’s tenements and notorious red-light district. In addition to its massive depot and office complex, 1.48 miles of track were installed in nearby streets such as Ward to attract industrial uses that would be supported by the terminal. Bordellos and tenements quickly gave way to manufacturers producing everything from liquor, ice cream, and chero-cola soda to slaughterhouses making meat and sausages. Furthermore, many residences including the birthplace of James Weldon Johnson were razed. To further erase Ward’s reputation from the record books, the street was renamed to Houston by the early 1920s. The final nail in the coffin of what was left, in terms of remaining building fabric from this era, was leveled during the 1990s as a part of the River City Renaissance Plan.

An adaptive reuse project currently under construction has recently exposed the brick facade of a building that originally was constructed as a market in the heart of the The Line 111 years ago.

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