New book chronicles downtown revitalization

By Anne H. Oman
Reporter-At-Large
December 15, 2019

Suanne Zuzel Thamm grew up in two small towns on the shores of Lake Erie west of Buffalo, New York. One, Dunkirk, embraced 1950s style urban renewal and stripped itself of all charm. The other, Silver Creek, pop. 3,065 (“When my family moved, it went down to 3,060.”) retained its small-town ambiance. She decided early on that she preferred the latter. She found it in Fernandina Beach, and for the past 25 years has worked hard to preserve it.

Since moving to Fernandina in 1994 with her husband, Gerhardt, a retired Army intelligence officer, Ms. Thamm has volunteered with just about every organization that promotes local history and historic preservation including the Amelia Island Museum of History, the Duncan Lamont Clinch Historical Society, the Amelia Island Fernandina Restoration Society, Northeast Florida Preservation, Inc., the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, and the city’s Historic District Council. She also reports on city government and other topics for the Fernandina Observer and greets visitors at the waterfront Shrimping Museum. As her latest labor of love in the cause of historic preservation, Ms. Thamm has authored a new book, Saving Fernandina 1972-1978: Revitalizing a Historic Downtown and its Businesses.

“Earlier this year, Buddy [Attorney Buddy Jacobs, a major force in downtown revitalization] asked me if he could pay me to write a history of the Centre Street project,” she told the Observer in an interview. “I rejected it immediately and said that if I ever wrote it, I would do it for free as my contribution to this wonderful community…. Finally, I started to look at just what such a project would entail. And I got hooked. I learned so much about all the work that had been done in this city in such a short period of time…”

To truly appreciate the charm of today’s downtown – with its shade trees, Victorian lampposts, brick sidewalks, mini-gardens and inviting benches — you have to travel back in time to the end of the 1960s, when Centre Street was still Atlantic Avenue and, in the words of the book, “looking tired…It was a wide street with diagonal parking places and parking meters along both sides. The street’s earlier brick paving, as well as earlier trolley tracks, had been covered with asphalt… Utility poles and lined the downtown street…”

Although dear to the city’s teenagers as a racetrack, a place to “drag the Main”, the street was a charmless artery, with little to attract visitors. True, some architectural gems, remnants of the city’s Golden Age, remained, but were “showing their age, and, in some cases, suffering from misguided modernization attempts”

As the 1970s – the era of out-of-downtown shopping malls –began, “business and community leaders looked at the future with unease. This small Florida city (Population 8,000) was caught up in changes that threatened the economic viability of its downtown business district as well as the survival of its unique collection of Victorian Era buildings.”

There was growing realization of the problem, but it took a wrecking ball to galvanize the city’s merchants and preservationists into action: the demolition of the iconic, Mediterranean Revival Keystone Hotel, which once graced the southwest corner of Atlantic Avenue at 8th Street. The 1912 building has once hosted producer Sam Goldwyn, comedian Joe E. Brown, and the farm teams of the Washington Senators and the Minnesota Twins. (The late Mary Agnes White, who, with her husband, Bob, played an important role in downtown revitalization, recalled teenagers walking by the hotel’s front porch, trying to attract the attention of the baseball players.)

Out of the ruins, the Amelia Island Fernandina Restoration Foundation, Inc. took shape and promptly got to work to transform the eight blocks of Atlantic Avenue from 8th Street to the waterfront into the welcoming, bustling, browser-friendly Centre Street that attracts visitors and shoppers today.

“From my interest in history during my 25-year tenure in the city, I already knew a lot about the people and events,” said Ms. Thamm. “But I had to figure out a way to organize the information and present it in a way that was entertaining. Suzanne Hardee’s scrapbook was a treasure trove, as were the city archives and back issues of local newspapers.” (The late Suzanne Davis Hardee was President of the Restoration Foundation.)

Talking with a reporter in the comfortable, memento-and-antique-filled living room of her home in the historic district, Ms. Thamm recounted her more or less accidental arrival in Fernandina.

The couple had bought property in Palm Coast, and drove to Florida to take a look at it.
“We hadn’t realized how boring the ride is –we’d always flown before,” she recalled. “I said to Gerhardt, ‘let’s stop at the first place in Florida that has the word beach in its name.’”

Hence, Exit 373.

The Thamms stayed at the Fairbanks House, ate at Brett’s, watched a Shriners’ parade, and, inevitably, talked with a real estate agent. They settled on what was essentially a one-room house on Broome Street, and any thought of retiring to Palm Coast was quickly forgotten.
“The house appears on birdseye maps of Fernandina in 1884,” she said.

The Thamms quickly set about turning it into a more spacious residence with his and hers studies, a welcoming front porch, and a well-tended garden. Souvenir plate of Niagara Falls and stained- glass windows from a razed church in Dunkirk, New York reflect Suanne’s upstate New York roots, while shelves of oom-pah like nutcrackers and antique beer steins honor Gerhardt’s German heritage. And books fill every nook and cranny.

“The historic district reminded me a lot of where I grew up,” Ms. Thamm recalled. “There was a strong sense of community… . Everybody walked to the Post Office, the library, city hall… To me, one of the most important things was that we had sidewalks so we could walk everywhere.”

Is there still a sense of community?

“Fernandina works because it’s a place where people come together,” she says. “They volunteer and support all the non-profits. It’s the belief of people who live here that we have such a wonderful unique place that keeps all of this going.”

But things do change, and there are still issues to be addressed: the opening of Alachua Street and the long talked-about waterfront park, for example,

“And there are a lot of different communities now,” she continues. “There are different neighborhoods—the beach, Amelia Park, Isle de Mai…”

But everyone still comes downtown – thanks to the vision and hard work of the people who revitalized the downtown historic district in the 1970s.

Saving Fernandina 1972-1978: Revitalizing a Historic Downtown and its Businesses is available at the Amelia Island Museum of History, The Book Loft, and Story & Song.  Proceeds from the sales will be divided among Fernandina Beach Main Street, the Restoration Foundation, and the Amelia Island Museum of History.

Anne H. Oman relocated to Fernandina Beach from Washington, D.C. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Washington Times, Family Circle and other publications. We thank Anne for her contributions to the Fernandina Observer.