The Great Fire of 1901 in Jacksonville: What Burned and How the City Rebuilt

The Great Fire started on May 3, 1901, when a spark ignited piles of drying Spanish moss at a mattress factory, and it soon spread to most of downtown Jacksonville (Florida Memory).

The Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department history puts the time at 12:30 p.m., when a cinder from a nearby chimney landed on moss and fiber drying in the sun at the Cleaveland Fiber Factory at Union and Davis streets (JFRD history). Spanish moss was cured there for use as mattress stuffing, according to the Jacksonville Historical Society. Florida Memory, the State Archives of Florida exhibit, describes the same spark as coming from a kitchen fire at lunchtime (Florida Memory).

Jacksonville was then Florida's largest city, with about 28,000 people, and the weather had been hot and dry for weeks (Jacksonville Historical Society). The Historical Society account says the factory's moss watchman had gone to lunch, and a bucket of water could not stop the blaze once the wind rose. Fire Chief Thomas W. Haney, who earned twice the mayor's salary, took charge at the factory and then saw burning moss landing on roofs to the east.

Strong westerly winds carried the fire through downtown Jacksonville, and it did not stop until it reached the St. Johns River (JFRD history). The burned path ran nearly two miles west to east and one mile north to south, the Jacksonville Historical Society says.

By 8:30 p.m. the fire had destroyed 2,368 buildings across 146 city blocks of Jacksonville, left 10,000 people homeless and killed seven residents (Florida Memory).

The Jacksonville Historical Society measures the burned district at 466 acres and says every public building in the city was lost except the U.S. Post Office (Jacksonville Historical Society). It ranks the Jacksonville fire as the third largest metropolitan fire in U.S. history, after San Francisco and Chicago, while Florida Memory calls it the largest metropolitan fire in the American South. Florida Memory adds that smoke could be seen as far north as Savannah, Georgia.

The city's own firefighters lost ground with everyone else: the fire destroyed three of Jacksonville's five fire stations, and property damage totaled $15 million (JFRD history).

Governor William Jennings declared martial law in Jacksonville and sent in the state militia, and civil government did not resume until May 17, 1901 (Florida Memory).

Relief began before the flames were out. The federal government rushed thousands of tents to Jacksonville while the city still burned, and committees run by the city government, the Board of Trade, the churches and the women of the city fed, clothed, employed and moved the people burned out (Jacksonville Historical Society). Jacksonville smoldered for days, and the Historical Society reports that newspapers described the glow being visible in Savannah.

The size of the relief job shows in the 125th anniversary article the Jacksonville Historical Society published on May 4, 2026, which says more than 10,000 people were left homeless and points to a book by editor and publisher Walter S. Wagstaff in the Jacksonville History Center research library that lists the public buildings, churches, schools, banks, hotels and homes destroyed (Jacksonville Historical Society, 2026). That list of sufferers is a starting point for Jacksonville family research.

Jacksonville spent the next decade rebuilding its downtown, and architect Henry John Klutho designed many of the new buildings (Florida Memory).

Klutho came to Jacksonville from New York in 1901 after learning that the fire had destroyed most of the city on the north side of the St. Johns River (National Park Service nomination). The Florida State College at Jacksonville library guide says he read about the fire in the New York Times and that his high rises were the first built of reinforced concrete in the South (FSCJ Library). His best known Jacksonville designs included the City Hall, Courthouse and Board of Trade, all since demolished, and the Public Library, YMCA and St. James Building, according to the National Register nomination.

Hotels and stores came back one by one. After the 1901 fire the Windsor was the only large Jacksonville hotel rebuilt, on its old block west of Hemming Park, in 1902; the St. James Hotel, destroyed in the fire, was not rebuilt (NPS nomination). The Cohen Brothers department store, burned out on Bay Street, set up a temporary store at 303 West Bay Street and then built the St. James Building with Klutho on the old hotel block. Completed in 1912, it is built of reinforced concrete with terra cotta ornament of Klutho's design.

The St. James Building now serves as Jacksonville City Hall (Florida Memory). The fire department rebuilt too: in 1912 it placed its first motorized apparatus in service, two engines and a 65 foot ladder truck (JFRD history).

Klutho's St. James Building, completed after the fire on the block facing the park now named James Weldon Johnson Park, serves today as Jacksonville City Hall (Florida Memory).

The park, formerly Hemming Park, was set aside as a public square in 1857 by Isaiah Hart and is the oldest park in Jacksonville, according to the City of Jacksonville, which notes it has survived disasters (City of Jacksonville). Florida Memory notes that the Confederate monument then standing in Hemming Park was one of the few city landmarks to survive the 1901 fire.

Klutho Park at 204 W. Third Street, originally called Springfield Park, was created mostly between 1899 and 1901 on land donated by the Springfield Company, a local developer (FSCJ Library). The Jacksonville Fire Museum opened in the old Station 3 on October 3, 1982 (JFRD history).

For records, the Jacksonville Historical Society, which keeps the Jacksonville History Center research library and the James E. Merrill House Museum, lists its address as 314 Palmetto Street, phone (904) 665-0064, and recommends the book The Great Fire of 1901 by Bill Foley and Wayne Wood (Jacksonville Historical Society).

The state archives, the Jacksonville fire department and the Jacksonville Historical Society agree on the date, the 2,368 buildings and the 146 blocks, but they differ on the spark, the street corner, the factory name and the wind (JFRD history).

Florida Memory places the mattress factory at Davis and Beaver streets (Florida Memory), while the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department gives Union and Davis streets, as does the Jacksonville Historical Society passage quoted in the FSCJ library guide (FSCJ Library). JFRD and the Historical Society spell the business Cleaveland Fibre or Fiber Factory; the FSCJ guide spells it Cleveland. JFRD blames a cinder from a nearby chimney, Florida Memory a spark from a kitchen fire at lunchtime, and the Historical Society passage in the FSCJ guide a spark from a small wood-burning cook stove.

On the wind, JFRD describes strong westerly winds driving the fire to the St. Johns River, while a 2016 Jacksonville Historical Society article describes an easterly wind blowing in unexpectedly at the factory (Jacksonville Historical Society). The older Historical Society passage quoted in the FSCJ guide, however, credits a strong westerly wind. Florida Memory also calls the rebuilt landmark the St. James Hotel and says it opened in 1911; the National Register nomination shows the St. James Hotel burned in 1901 and dates completion of the St. James Building, the department store on its block, to 1912 (NPS nomination).