By Emily Lisska
mail@floridanewsline.com
The celebrated Mandarin Road features a new historic site marker, which reveals more than a century of area history. The forest green and deep gold marker recently installed in front of the Mandarin Community Club presents the structure’s history as a longtime community club and in its early years as a public school. The marker’s dual title honors the Mandarin School, educating the community’s children in the 1872 building and the Mandarin Community Club, founded at the site in 1923.
Significant area events connected to the club’s century of service are among the marker’s highlights. It also includes site activities dating to the late 1860s, decades prior to the club’s ownership. Of particular note, the wood frame folk structure, constructed through the efforts of Mandarin winter resident Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the place where area children were educated for more than half a century. It was simply known as the Mandarin School.
As a centennial project to recognize the club’s founding, the site marker was installed in time for the organization’s 101st birthday.
“When the club’s 100th Anniversary Committee set priorities for its century celebration, at the top of the list was a site marker to describe the building’s remarkable history,” said Mark Waterman, club president.
Included on the marker is the club’s role as a founding home for the Mandarin Volunteer Fire Department, the Mandarin Garden Club, the Mandarin Museum and Historical Society and several Mandarin churches. Marker text reveals the community’s first library and well-baby clinic were club projects at the site. Even the Mandarin Orange Pickers baseball team was housed and played games at the property.
The marker touts the club’s role in its decades-long fight to bring electricity to Mandarin, finally achieved in 1936. Two years later, the building was presented as a gift to the club by Edwin and Mina Jones. Edwin was the son of the club’s first president, Walter Jones, the marker states.
The project also required relocating the Harriet Beecher Stowe Home Historic Site Marker from its confusing location in front of the club to a more accurate location about 150 feet east. The Stowe marker is now installed across the road from the original Stowe home site, a long-gone gingerbread-trimmed cottage on the river bluff.
A City of Jacksonville neighborhood grant provided matching funds for the project and the City of Jacksonville is listed on the marker, along with the Mandarin Community Club, as sponsors. Heading the committee to create the new marker and relocate the Stowe home site marker was Susie Scott, Brett Nolan and Emily Lisska. They underscored the project’s importance in the site marker’s opening text:
“As a ‘direct link to the Post-Civil War Reconstruction era, to Harriet Beecher Stowe, to emancipated slaves and to the educational, religious and cultural life of early Mandarin, this site and building’ are singularly significant in Florida history.”
“We’re proud of the club’s accomplishments, the new marker and the story it tells. Both site markers reveal extraordinary Mandarin history. This information will educate residents and visitors and also offer new appreciation for our community,” said Waterman. “I hope Mandarin residents, in particular, will take time to visit the new historic site marker and review the old Stowe home marker in its new location — more closely identifying the old Stowe cottage site.”
The Mandarin Community Club is located at 12447 Mandarin Road. The organization is known for its signature Easter weekend Art Festival, a late winter tree give-away and the annual Mandarin Christmas tree lighting. Membership is open to all at mandarincommunityclub.org.
Photo courtesy Mandarin Community Club
The newly acquired historic site marker highlighting the Mandarin School and Mandarin Community Club history in honor of the organization’s 100th anniversary in 2023.
