St. Johns Quarter Laws: Six Blocks With Their Own Historic Designation

TL;DR: St. Johns Quarter is a locally designated historic district covering roughly six blocks and 18 acres inside Riverside. Because it’s locally designated, exterior work there requires an approved Certificate of Appropriateness from the City of Jacksonville, same as Springfield and Riverside/Avondale. The designation exists to prevent demolitions and block incompatible new construction on a small, dense stretch of early-20th-century architecture near the river.

The short answers

Where is St. Johns Quarter?
It’s a small section of Riverside near the St. Johns River, roughly six blocks covering about 18 acres.

Is it a real historic district or just a neighborhood name?
It’s a locally designated historic district, which is the regulatory kind. Exterior work requires a Certificate of Appropriateness.

Why does it have its own designation if it’s inside Riverside?
Local designation happened district by district over time. St. Johns Quarter was designated separately, so it stands as its own district in the city’s list.

What is the designation meant to do?
Prevent buildings from being demolished and stop incompatible new buildings from going up.

So how many local historic districts does Jacksonville have, three or four?
The city counts three: Springfield, Riverside/Avondale, and St. Johns Quarter. Some sources say four by listing Riverside and Avondale separately. Same places, different counting.

Does the National Register cover it?
National Register listing is largely honorary and separate. Local designation is what triggers the COA requirement.

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There’s a stretch of Riverside near the river where the buildings are older, denser, and grander than what surrounds them, and it has its own name and its own legal protection. Most people who drive through don’t know it’s separately designated.

St. Johns Quarter is about six blocks and 18 acres. It’s the smallest of Jacksonville’s locally designated historic districts and the one nobody writes about.

If you want the county-wide frame, start with the Duval ordinance guide. For the surrounding neighborhood’s separate rules, see Riverside Avondale.

Why it’s designated separately

Here’s the thing that confuses people, and it’s worth clearing up because we ran into it ourselves.

Jacksonville’s local historic districts came about through a long, uneven history of preservation efforts. Which properties are protected has as much to do with where local organizing succeeded as with the buildings themselves. Some historically significant neighborhoods never got designated because there wasn’t local support, or because too much of the original fabric had already been lost to form a coherent district.

St. Johns Quarter got designated. It sits inside Riverside geographically, but it stands as its own entry on the city’s list of locally designated districts.

On the count. The city’s Historic Preservation materials list three locally designated districts: Springfield, Riverside/Avondale, and St. Johns Quarter. Other sources say four, listing Riverside and Avondale as separate districts. Both are describing the same protected ground. If you see either number, that’s why.

What the designation means for you

Local designation is the kind with teeth. National Register listing is an honor and doesn’t regulate what you do to your property, aside from demolition review by the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission. Local designation regulates.

If you own property in St. Johns Quarter, the rules are the same as the other locally designated districts:

• A Certificate of Appropriateness is required before exterior work, and it has to be approved before you start
• That covers re-roofing, window and door replacement, siding, masonry work, plus site work like fences, driveways, and sidewalks
• Most applications are approved administratively by Historic Preservation staff
• Bigger items go to the Historic Preservation Commission: demolition of contributing structures, new construction, two-story additions, street-visible additions, window replacement, and relocation
• An approved COA is valid for one year, extending to five years once work begins

The stated purpose of the designation is direct: keep buildings from being demolished, and keep incompatible buildings from being built. On 18 acres with this much intact early-20th-century architecture, both risks are real.

One clarification that trips people up here as much as in Riverside: Riverside Avondale Preservation does not process COA applications. RAP is a nonprofit neighborhood organization. Applications go through the City of Jacksonville.

What’s actually in those six blocks

The density of significant architecture is why this small area got its own designation.

The Park Lane, completed in 1926, was Florida’s first high-rise condominium building at 16 stories. The developer brought the concept back from a trip to New York, and original units sold from around $12,000.

The Fenimore Apartments, completed in 1922 at a reported cost of $90,000, was reportedly named for James Fenimore Cooper, whose novels were popular at the time.

The Leon Cheek residence at 2263 River Boulevard, built 1928 to 1929 and designed by architect Roy Benjamin, is among the more elaborate houses in the district.

The Riverside House at 2107 River Boulevard has the strangest history of the bunch. It was built in Brooklyn around 1870 as part of what was called Riverside Row, known then as the Rochester House, and was moved to its present site by barge roughly a century ago.

There’s also a 1919 Prairie School house built for William Baldwin, vice president of the Baldwin-Lewis Naval Stores Company, and the Dickert House, a 1914 Prairie style home on Copeland Street. The Villas of St. Johns, a four-story development of 257 apartments completed in 2000, forms the northern boundary.

That’s a lot of history packed into six blocks, which is exactly the argument for designating it.

Which Jacksonville neighborhoods have no designation at all

Worth knowing, because the assumption that “old neighborhood” equals “protected” causes a lot of confusion.

Neighborhoods that are not designated locally or nationally include Arlington, Durkeeville, Eastside, Lackawanna, Mandarin, Mixontown, Murray Hill, New Town, Panama Park, San Marco, and Tallulah.

Some of those surprise people. San Marco has a zoning overlay with real design controls, as covered in the San Marco overlay post, but it is not a historic district, so there’s no COA requirement there. Murray Hill has plenty of period architecture and no designation of either kind.

Jacksonville also has roughly 100 individually listed local landmarks. A single designated landmark carries COA requirements even if the surrounding neighborhood has none.

Quick win

If you’re buying anywhere in Riverside, don’t assume you know which rules apply from the listing description.

Check the parcel on the JaxGIS Land Development map with both the “Local Historic Districts” and “Local Landmarks” layers turned on. You could be in Riverside/Avondale, in St. Johns Quarter, on an individually designated landmark, or in none of the above, and each answer means a different process for your renovation.

Six blocks is a small target, but if you’re in it, it changes everything about your exterior work.

Designation boundaries and COA requirements change. Confirm your property’s status with the City of Jacksonville Historic Preservation Section at 904-255-7859 before starting any exterior work.