JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Dozens of firefighters battled a massive fire of an abandoned, historic school overnight, forcing several roads in the Riverside area to close.
Fire crews responded to Annie Lytle Elementary School just before midnight on Sunday. The school, just off Interstate 95, was showing heavy smoke and fire when crews arrived. Initially, flames could be seen from downtown.
Due to the size of the fire and the structure, the blaze presented some challenges to firefighters.
"It's been under demolition and construction for many years, it's a historic building, the site of it -- it's got some unique properties to it," JFRD District Chief Jack Griggs said.
At dawn Monday, smoke was still coming from the building and crews were continuing to find hot spots and try to prevent flare-ups. The State Fire Marshal was expected to investigate the cause of the fire.
The Interstate 10 ramp from I-95 was initially shut down due to heavy smoke. College Street at Roselle Street to Park Street and all of Chelsea Street didn't reopen until after 8 a.m.
The school, originally called Public School Number 4, was constructed in 1917 at a cost of $250,000 and originally overlooked Riverside Park, before the construction of I-95 and I-10 isolated it in the 1950s. It was later named for its former longtime teacher and principal.
According to MetroJacksonville.com, the school closed in 1960, although it was used for storage and office space until it was condemned in 1971.
The property was purchased in 1999 by a company intending to tear down the structure in order to build condominiums, but multiple historic societies convinced the Jacksonville City Council to designate the old school a historic landmark in 2000, which prevent its demolition.
The school has been the scene of several smaller fires and a haven for truants and transients over the past few decades.
The building that's been empty and run down for years, littered with trash and tagged by graffiti still has quite a following.
"My father went to school here," historian and author Wayne Wood said.
"This building's actually one of the inspirations for me going into the field that I'm in," said Lisa Sheppard, of the city's Historic Preservation Commission.
Those like Wood and Sheppard say the building is a special place to so many people. The school closed in the 1950s, and since then, it has changed ownership countless times. People have planned to make it a center for the arts, a theater, condos and senior citizen housing. But those ideas never became a reality.
The building is currently owned by a company in southwest Florida. The land belongs to a foundation in Jacksonville.
"It's a beautiful building and it's a large building," Wood said. "It's a building we have great hope to be preserved and we still do. It'll just take a lot more effort now to pull that off."
Those who want to renovate the building say the fire is tragic but may be the spark the city and developers need to start again.
"I'm holding onto some hope," Sheppard said. "A lot of times when you've got something like this, it opens up some more opportunities that you weren't thinking about before."
"The wooden parts are burned, but the brick walls are still there and we still have hopes this will someday be restored as a meaningful part of Jacksonville's future," Wood said.