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Brooklyn, Jacksonville — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Office towers line Riverside Avenue in Brooklyn, a St. Johns River neighborhood of Jacksonville platted for freed people after the Civil War.
About Brooklyn
Where to stay in Brooklyn
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Brooklyn keeps its beds on the Riverside Avenue side, a few blocks from the St. Johns River and a short walk from Downtown Jacksonville. Unity Plaza adjoins 220 Riverside. From Brooklyn Station on Riverside the Northbank Riverwalk runs south along the water toward the Fuller Warren Bridge, which carries Interstate 95 across the river.
Inland past Park Street the grid turns residential, and Chelsea Street and Spruce Street go quiet early. You will want the river end if walking to Downtown Jacksonville matters more than that quiet.
About Brooklyn
What are the main landmarks in Brooklyn?
Brooklyn keeps its landmarks at street level rather than in museums. Public School Number Four, opened in 1918 as Riverside Grammar School, stands at the western edge where Interstate 95 and Interstate 10 cut past. The old Mt. Calvary Baptist Church building holds the corner of Spruce Street and Dora Street.
Its cornerstone reads March 15, 1896. Brooklyn Park and the Rev. J.S.
Johnson Service Center serve the residential grid off Jackson Street, and Unity Plaza does that job for the rebuilt blocks along Riverside Avenue.
What is the history of Brooklyn?
Brooklyn began in 1801 as Dell's Bluff, an 800-acre plantation Phillip Dell opened on this bank of the St. Johns River. After the Civil War the Confederate veteran Miles Price bought the tract, sold its southern half for the suburb of Riverside, and platted the northern half as Brooklyn. Price sold those lots to freed people and to Buffalo Soldiers, who raised shotgun and hall-and-parlor cottages along Chelsea Street.
Jacksonville annexed the suburb in 1887. Interstate 95 severed it in the 1950s, and in 1968 Reggie Bridges ran the radio station WATG from a Jackson Street house.
Where is Brooklyn?
Brooklyn holds about half a square mile of central Jacksonville, with McCoys Creek on the north edge and the St. Johns River east. Interstate 95 closes it south and west.
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More areas in Jacksonville
Updated September 2026