Years ago, down the hill and less than a mile away from the Florida Capitol, stood a cluster of homes that was named after the haze of smoke that hung over the low-lying neighborhood.
Driving on Franklin Street, locals can now see the tribute that stands there, a set of three open, black steel “spirit houses” that represent Smokey Hollow.
Between right after the Civil War and the 1960s, the neighborhood was home to a thriving Black community, with churches, restaurants, stores and hundreds of residents.
A visitor to Tallahassee in 1893 described the deep red gullies and rows of “Negro cabins” that lined St. Augustine Road as it passed down the hill from the state capitol over the railroad and up the wooded slopes, wrote Althemese Barnes, a local leader in the preservation and recognition of African American history, in a 1998 Tallahassee Democrat column.
Writing in 1891, a local Black resident described it as “a neighborhood of a few hundred, hardworking, low income Blacks who made up a portion of the local, common labor work force. In later years, many were employed by the city, county and state governments. Most lived as tenants in tiny ‘shotgun’ type homes bordering on narrow unpaved streets.”