Have you ever wondered what it was like in Jacksonville 50 years ago? It may have been a different era of history, culture and politics, but there are often parallels between the kind of stories that made headlines then and today. As interesting as the similarities may be, so are the differences. These are some of the top stories from the week of Aug. 10-16, 1959. The items were compiled from the Jacksonville Public Library’s periodical archives by Staff Writer Max Marbut.
• Utilities Commissioner J. Dillon Kennedy announced that the Downtown business district would soon have a new street lighting system. He said a contract had been signed for delivery of 325 new aluminum poles which were expected to be installed by Jan. 1 or shortly thereafter.
Kennedy also said the initial installation would cover the area bounded by Church Street on the north, the St. Johns River on the south, Main Street on the east and Broad Street on the west. Lights would also be placed in the first phase on Main Street north to Hogan’s Creek and on Forsyth Street from Main Street east to Newnan Street.
• Circuit Judge A.D. McNeill dismissed a lawsuit by which Public Transit Lines had hoped to gain a public hearing before the City Council on a application for a franchise to compete with the Jacksonville Coach Company for local bus service.
The judge;s order was a considerable setback for PTL in its battle for a franchise but PTL attorney Fred S. Rizk said he had not given up hope. Rizk also said he would consider filing a motion to amend his original petition for an alternative writ of mandamus. If that fails, he said, he would appeal to a higher court.
A petition for the writ previously filed charged that the Council violated its duty by repeatedly ignoring PTL’s pleas for a public hearing after the application was made in November, 1958. In an amendment to the petition Rizk said Council actually held three public hearings but received only testimony hostile to PTL.
City Attorney William M. Madison pointed out that the City Charter made no mention of any public hearing on a franchise application. He further argued that the court under American law had no right to interfere with the processes of a legislative body.
• Parking meters, described as “the curse of the marathon shopper,” were proving to be a revenue stream. It was reported that pennies (before 1953), nickels and dimes collected in the meters added up to $1,928,570.87 since the meters were installed Jan. 2, 1942.
Penalties for parking without paying have changed quite a bit since 1959. Back then “statements” were placed on delinquent cars’ windshields noting that in addition to the 5-cent parking fee a 95-cent “carrying charge” was due and payable within 48 hours at the City Parking Meter Department.
If the consumer was slow in paying he would get a postcard in the mail a week later informing him an additional $1 was due making the total charge $2. If that notice didn’t motivate an immediate remittance, the bill went up to a possible $5 when a warrant was served.
When a customer accumulated a “more than reasonable” number of bad debts a lien of sorts was placed on the vehicle. Metermen and police started looking for vehicles described on a “most wanted list.” When found at a Downtown curb, the vehicle was taken into custody by police who called a wrecker and had the offending vehicle hauled to the police lot.
In order to liberate the vehicle, the motorist had to appear at the City jail, post a $50 bond, pay a wrecker fee of $7.50 and a storage fee of $2. In order to retrieve the $50 (or part of it) the motorist was required to appear before Municipal Judge John Santora. The wrecker and storage fees were not retrievable.
Municipal authorities decided it was bad business to be too lenient on chronic offenders so in August 1958 Mayor Haydon Burns ordered a police crackdown which led to the “most wanted list.”
From August 1958 to February 1959, about 100 habitual parking violators were brought to justice under the system. Crime then took a holiday while parking inspectors began amassing a new list among cars with 1959 license plates.
In July 1959, parking fees of $13,305.80 were collected in the conventional manner and $9,129 was collected from those parking on the “time payment” plan.
This week 50 years ago there were 105 meters which accepted a nickel for 36 minutes of parking, 735 meters at which one could park for an hour for a nickel and 292 meters where two consecutive hours of parking could be had for two nickels.
The most expensive meter parking was at 544 locations where the motorist could pay a nickel for 30 minutes and add a second nickel for another half-hour.
• More county residents were reading books borrowed form the Jacksonville Public Library than at any time since November 1956.
That was the date the library shifted to the “fee card” system for borrowers living outside the city limits. The fee system required persons living outside the city (but in Duval County) to pay $2 for one year’s library privilege.
Before the system went into effect anyone could get a three-year library card free of charge. At the time of the plan’s adoption, one-third of the library’s total circulation went to people living outside the city while the library was financed almost completely by City funding.
More than 8,500 county residents held library cards when the fee went into effect and their cards were valid until their regular expiration date. At first the fee cards moved slowly with only 1,843 issued by early 1958. Circulation picked up rapidly in the next few months and by April, 1959 more than 4,500 “county cards” were in use.
Figures showed that the Southside, Willow Branch and Downtown libraries had more county borrowers that borrowers who lived in the city limits. As for revenue, fees for the county cards in 1958 totaled $3,686 with fines amounting to $7,877.
It was noted that in most areas reading programs were encouraged primarily by libraries “which cater to the convenience of the public perhaps more than any other public institution.”
• A tract of land purchased in Neptune Beach was at the time one of the largest sites in Florida for a Methodist church.
Officers of the Jacksonville District Board of Missions and Church Extension of the Florida Methodist Conference signed a three-year mortgage agreement in a room at St. Luke’s Hospital. The mission board’s president, C.B. Peeler, was convalescing there following surgery.
The land, 8.72 acres on Penman Road about 600 feet south of Atlantic Boulevard, was purchased from Jack, William C. and J. Charles Demetree for a reported sum of $20,000. The Livingston Memorial Fund, a philanthropic foundation dedicated to building Methodist churches, paid 25 percent of the cost of the tract. The mission board made a partial payment on the remainder and assumed the mortgage for the balance.
• In a related story, the award of a contract to rebuild Penman Road was formally authorized by the County Commission. A resolution proposed by commissioner Joe B. Mallard, in whose district the road was listed, approved the utilization of Duval County gasoline tax funds for the project.
He said the new construction would extend from Atlantic Boulevard to Beach Boulevard, a distance of about three miles. The new roadway would be 24 feet wide and constructed in accordance with State Road Department standards for primary road construction.
Bids on the job had already been received. The low offer was submitted by Jacksonville Beach contractor B.B. McCormick and Sons with a figure of $200,000.
The job was expected to take between three and four months to complete, said Mallard. He added he hoped to see the road extended in the future as far as the St. Johns County line.
• It was announced trailer-on-flatcar or “piggyback” service would be inaugurated Nov. 1 by the Seaboard Airline Railroad.
“Establishment of this service will give Jacksonville shippers the benefit of through piggyback service between this area and the principle cities if Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. The service will extend through the Florida cities of Miami, Tampa and Wildwood,” said E.H. Brown, the railroad’s assistant freight traffic manager in Jacksonville.
• An Atlantic Beach man who was charged with selling “a reel of obscene motion picture film” to an undercover agent of Juvenile Court in March was bound over to Criminal Court to be tried on the charge.
Arthur E. Langlione, 38, was ordered to trial by Juvenile Court Judge Marion W. Gooding following a preliminary hearing.
Principal witness against Langlione was C.E. Washburn, a Navy chief petty officer who said he had assisted Juvenile Court authorities in a number of investigations. Washburn declared Langlione delivered the pornographic material to him at a Jacksonville Beach automobile sales lot for $15. Washburn said he handed the film over to Morris Smith, assistant counselor for Juvenile Court.
B.K. Finley, an agent of the State Beverage Department was the last witness to testify at the hearing. He said he traveled to the beach to observe the purchase of the obscene film and witness the transaction between Langlione and Washburn.
• The embezzlement-plagued Jax Police Credit Union’s operation was seized by the State Comptroller’s Office with a recommendation that all officers, directors and committee members resign. The resignations were expected to be tendered at a general membership meeting of credit union shareholders scheduled for Aug. 24.
State Comptroller Ray E. Green said, “We’ve been trying for about three weeks to see if it couldn’t be worked out without us having to take it over but I just finally came to the conclusion that there was just too much mystery about it and apparently they weren’t making the progress that we thought they ought to so we got in on it.”
In a directive to members of the credit union Green stated, “If it be determined in due course that the credit union cannot be placed in a safe and sound condition I shall have no alternative but to deliver it to a liquidate with instructions to wind up and terminate its affairs.”
The investigation began three weeks earlier when a cache of cash was discovered between a wall and a desk when the desk was moved. That led to an audit which revealed a history of poor bookkeeping practices.
• The State Road Department approved installation of a traffic light by the Duval County Board of Commissioners at the corner of Normandy Boulevard and Lane Avenue.
The SRD elected not to approve a traffic signal at the corner of North Main Street and Eastport Road in Oceanway.
• Failure of the water from a heavy rain to exit properly from the Myrtle Avenue underpass was attributed to pump failure and obstructed catch basins.
City Engineer Bill Bryant said a crew worked for a day and a half to determine why the underpass filled with water. A new $170,000 drainage system had recently been installed at the site. He said two catch basins which were designed to carry off most of the water were filled with sand and dirt that had apparently washed down from the intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Dennis Street where a contractor was excavating for the Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company.
Bryant also said pumps in a station at the underpass operated by the Jacksonville Terminal Company either were not working at peak efficiency or one of the pumps was not working at all. The pumps were connected to a drain line that ended at McCoy’s Creek.