Editor’s Note: Every home has a story. With our new series, “If These Walls Could Talk,” Resident News will explore the history found within the homes and structures that shape our Resident communities. From Riverside and Avondale to San Marco and beyond, these buildings are more than beautiful landmarks – they are part of the identity, character and history of our neighborhoods. That’s why this series will feature stories from both sides of the river, celebrating the people, moments and memories that have lived within these walls.
When a handful of Christians met at a two-story home on the southwest corner of Hendricks Avenue and Louisa Street one warm afternoon in September 1886, they couldn’t have imagined the thousands of lives their meeting would touch over the next 140 years.
In those days, there were no electric lights or paved roads in what was then South Jacksonville, and the white picket fence surrounding the home where they met that day was there mainly to keep out the livestock that roamed the streets. On Sundays, going to church meant crossing the St. Johns River into Jacksonville via ferry or traveling the Old St. Augustine Road to a little church at Phillips Station.
Believing South Jacksonville needed a church of its own, a small group secured the blessing of the area’s Methodist Church elders and met at the home of former Governor Harrison Reed on Sept. 27, 1886, to formally organize the new church: Grace Methodist Episcopal Church…