Why Nobody Wants to Live in Jacksonville, Florida Anymore

Before Hollywood, there was Jacksonville. In the early 1900s, a devastating fire burned downtown Jacksonville, Florida, to the ground — and the rebuilt city became the unlikely birthplace of the American film industry. Over thirty silent film studios operated along the St. Johns River. Oliver Hardy made his first hundred pictures there. The company that became MGM was incorporated there. The first Technicolor feature was shot there. Then, in 1917, the city's own residents voted it all away. A single mayoral election drove the studios west to a place called Hollywood, and Jacksonville's golden age vanished almost overnight. Only one studio survived: Norman Studios, where a white filmmaker made groundbreaking "race films" with all-Black casts — the most important work to come out of Jacksonville's entire cinematic history, now a National Historic Landmark most people have never heard of. Sources Shawn C. Bean, The First Hollywood: Florida and the Golden Age of Silent Filmmaking (University Press of Florida) Robert C. Broward, The Architecture of Henry John Klutho: The Prairie School in Jacksonville (University of North Florida Press, 1983) "Lights, Camera, Action! The Role of Jacksonville in the Silent Film Era," SGR Law, May 2017 — sgrlaw.com Florida State College at Jacksonville, LibGuides: "Silent Film in Jax" and "Great Fire of 1901 + Klutho" — guides.fscj.edu Norman Studios Silent Film Museum historical materials and National Park Service landmark documentation — normanstudios.org / nps.gov Florida Memory, State Archives of Florida: Great Jacksonville Fire of 1901 photograph collection and Kalem Studios records — floridamemory.com