J Magazine Winter 2017

SHOWCASING OUR TREASURES
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 79
to the establishment of JFRD’s Hazardous
Materials team in the 1970s and beyond.”
That’ll include a 1902 horse-drawn steamer
fire engine and a 1924 ladder truck, as well
as a collection of old nozzles and hydrants.
Director/Fire Chief Kurtis Wilson said he
was intrigued to skim through large leather
budget ledgers from the early 1900s and
see the expenditures for things like horse
feed. As a “huge supporter, big cheerleader”
for the Fire Museum, Wilson said he has
required every new uniformed employee to
visit the museum to get an appreciation of
Jacksonville firefighter history and culture.
A huge uncertainty is the site of the
museum, which now is smack in the middle
of what is planned to be the Shipyards
development along the St. Johns. Will the
museum be integrated into the Shipyards, or
will it be relocated again? Officials said they
didn’t know and referred the question to the
Mayor’s Office, which wouldn’t say or maybe
doesn’t know.
But given that the museum is fronted by a
memorial to the 22 Jacksonville firefighters
who have died in the line of duty, surely it
will have a home.
the relocated Veterans Memorial.
Meanwhile, it will be developed into a
museum ship to draw tourists, host educational
and civic activities, educate people
about the Cold War and, as its planners say,
just be “a really fun thing to do in Downtown
Jacksonville due to the many interesting
historical aspects of the ship, ship tours and
ship experience,” like the “battle scenario” in
the Combat Information Center.
The Adams, which served in 1960-1990,
was the first guided-missile destroyer built
from the keel up for that purpose and is
credited with revolutionizing anti-air and
anti-submarine naval warfare as it protected
carrier task groups during the Cold War.
Homeported mostly at Mayport, the ship
played a leading role in the Cuban Missile
Crisis blockade, surveilled Soviet submarines
in the North Atlantic, patrolled in the
Mideast and helped recover the Mercury
manned space capsules.
The Jacksonville Historic Naval Ship
Association, a group of Navy veterans and
other volunteers, has been working for seven
years to acquire the Adams from the Navy,
get all the necessary approvals and raise $2.8
million for repairs and restoration, towing
and berthing. More work will be required to
take full advantage of the entire ship.
But then, said Daniel Bean, president of
the executive board and a retired Navy captain,
the Adams will offer interpretive tours,
overnight berthing for youth groups, human
activated models in command centers,
rooms for parties and meetings.
In maybe four years, Bean said the group’s
“wildest dreams” include a restaurant and
a bed-and-breakfast. “We want to keep
dreaming, keep changing.”
Hogans Creek is because the logical site
is right between Intuition Aleworks and
Manifest Distillery in the Doro building
and the olfactory factory of Maxwell
House on the other side of the creek.
After sampling the former and smelling
the latter, who wouldn’t need a cup of
coffee?
Furthermore, there is some history
and uniqueness: The brew was introduced
in 1892, named in honor of the
Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville, and
for many years was the largest-selling
coffee in the U.S., touted as “good to
the last drop.” The Maxwell House plant
in Jacksonville opened in 1910 as the
Cheek-Neal Coffee Co. on Bay Street,
across from the existing plant that was
built in 1924. All Maxwell House coffee is
now produced in the Jacksonville plant.
Well, a museum or even a coffee shop
is not going to happen. Maxwell House,
now a cog in the Kraft Heinz conglomerate,
is famously reclusive, and a spokesperson
politely declined to even talk
about it.
USS Adams
You know what this town needs? More
Navy!
Well, maybe not Navy bases given that
we already have two or even sailors since
we have a plethora but more Navy history,
knowledge and culture. And it’s coming.
Probably in January, you’ll be able to
go Downtown to Bay Street and watch the
mighty USS Charles F. Adams, a retired U. S.
Navy guided-missile destroyer, steam (well,
be towed) up the St. Johns River to its temporary
dock at the pier closest to the Berkman
II skeleton. When the Shipyards project
comes to life, the plan is for the Adams to be
anchored at the foot of Hogans Creek next to
TREASURES WE NEED
Coffee Museum
The only reason this is needed on
Hospital Museum
Jacksonville is not only a beach town
and a Navy town, it is also a regional
health-care center, given our major
medical centers — St. Vincent’s and
Baptist, of course, but also the academic
UF Health Jacksonville and, for heaven’s
sake, the top-ranked Mayo Clinic.
Since the founding here of the first
non-military hospital in Florida in 1870,
health care in Jacksonville has an engaging
and important history, and there
are still scattered artifacts, including two
remarkable hospital buildings.
St. Luke’s Hospital, on Palmetto Street
behind the Veterans Memorial Arena,
was built in 1878, replacing a two-room
structure built five years earlier for charity
cases. The Historical Society says St.
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90 J MAGAZINE | WINTER 2017-18