United States · Florida · Jacksonville
Riverside and Avondale, Jacksonville — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Riverside and Avondale is Jacksonville's bungalow quarter on the St. Johns River, where Five Points and the Shoppes of Avondale hold the shopfronts.
About Riverside and Avondale
Where to stay in Riverside and Avondale
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Two commercial pockets carry the beds. Five Points, at the five-way meeting of Park, Lomax, and Margaret Streets, keeps bars and kitchens within one block, and it suits you if you want to walk to dinner and back after dark. The Shoppes of Avondale, out along St. Johns Avenue, is quieter and leafier.
Rooms are scarce in both: this ground was platted for houses, and the district's own lodging runs to small inns and converted homes on Riverside Avenue. Larger hotel blocks stand downtown, across the Fuller Warren Bridge.
About Riverside and Avondale
What are the main landmarks in Riverside and Avondale?
Memorial Park holds the river edge. Olmsted Brothers laid it out with Roy A. Benjamin, and the park was dedicated on Christmas Day in 1924 to the Floridians who died in the First World War, its centerpiece a bronze winged figure by C. Adrian Pillars. The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens stands further along Riverside Avenue, keeping two acres of Italian and English gardens above the water.
At Park and King, Addison Mizner designed the 1925 Riverside Baptist Church. Five Points has the Park Arcade Building, finished in 1928. Riverside Park sits a few blocks inland.
What is the history of Riverside and Avondale?
Riverside began as plantation ground. Miles Price sold the southern half of Dell's Bluff in 1868 to Edward M. Cheney and John Murray Forbes, who platted the first Riverside; Jacksonville annexed it in 1887 and ran a streetcar out to it. The Great Fire of 1901 pushed families out of downtown into these blocks, and building went on until the Florida land boom broke.
Telfair Stockton's group bought the failed Edgewood tract in 1920 and laid out Avondale as a whites-only subdivision. Riverside Avondale Preservation formed in 1974. The Riverside Historic District reached the National Register in 1985, and Avondale in 1989.
Where is Riverside and Avondale?
Riverside and Avondale spread southwest of downtown Jacksonville, edged by the St. Johns River, Fishweir Creek, and Interstate 10 to the north.
Good for
More areas in Jacksonville
Updated September 2026