If I were to walk to the actual physical location where I graduated high school, it would be in the middle of a parking lot next to TIAA Bank Field. My graduation ceremony happened, like many my age, at the old Jacksonville Coliseum, which served as a multi-use building for over four decades to concerts, conventions, ice shows and, yes, graduations. But in 2003 it was imploded. In seconds, the physical representation of so many memories, GONE! (Video below)
There weren't many memories made at the Berkman II, the latest building to get imploded in downtown Jacksonville. The only memory most have is the tragic death of a worker as it was just starting to get built in 2007. For fourteen years the unfinished eyesore lingered. Until Sunday, in seconds, GONE. (video below)
The others I remember were the old City Hall, where I only had to pay one speeding ticket in person, was imploded in 2019. A year previous, the JEA cooling towers just east of the Dames Point Bridge, were imploded. As a toddler, my son called them the "cloud makers" since they shot what looked like clouds into the sky. We still called them that when they were imploded.
I remember a couple of hotels that were imploded; one in the '90s (the old Robert Meyer Hotel, which had its heyday in the '50s and '60s) and one in the 1970s (the Mayflower Hotel). The Mayflower building had been a hotel since the 1910s. It's kind of a drag that some of these older buildings couldn't have been preserved and renovated, but city officials and owners tend to do what they feel is best and (sometimes) what's more profitable at the time. I remember this building came down the year I graduated high school, the one whose ceremonies were at the now-parking lot!
Funny how it all weaves together.
Do you remember any others?