More than a hundred people showed up for a special lecture and walking tour of a history part of old Tallahassee on Saturday.
The focus was on several buildings, all clustered around Cascades Park, and how they trace the growth of the city during the first half of the Twentieth Century. Florida State University History Professor Jennifer Koslow gave a lecture about the origin and significance of the old city waterworks, county jail, Caroline Brevard School, county health building and power station, which was recently reborn as an upscale restaurant called the Edison. Koslow says the structures perfectly capture the way the community evolved during that fifty year span. “It’s how you really think about Tallahassee as a city in the Twentieth Century,” she said before taking her audience for an up-close inspection of the structures. During that time, she said, the town was rapidly becoming a sophisticated metropolis. “It wasn’t just a quaint, little old town,” she said. “It really was embracing the modern age and it would be a terrible loss to lose these last vestiges of that expression.” Three of the structures, the old jail and two health unit buildings, remain in danger of redevelopment.
