The south side neighborhood of Mandarin (named for the oranges) is a wonderful place to settle down with your family. The area is known for its beautiful scenery and high-quality educational institutions.
Historic Mandarin is renowned for its Spanish moss-draped oak trees, parks, marinas, and water views, earning it the nickname “a tropical paradise” from local author and notable inhabitant Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Envision a city where towering oak trees draped in Spanish moss line the streets. Close by, the Julington Creek gently flows; a boater’s paradise.
It’s convenient to get to downtown Jacksonville and the beaches from here, and there are some great parks and scenic river views in the area as well.
Rentals are scarce, and the median price of a home is around $350,000. Mandarin is one of the best neighborhoods in Jacksonville, FL, and it’s easy to see why if you’re a young family or a retiree.
The area, including Francis Levett Sr10,000-acre .’s plantation, was settled by the British in the 1760s. When it came to farming, the Levetts had a wide variety of crops they grew with the help of their slave labor force. The area was returned to Spain in 1783 thanks to the Treaty of Paris. The Spanish colonizers also founded a number of other notable plantations, one of which is the Kingsley Plantation.
Calvin Reed, a prominent local citizen, chose the mandarin orange as the inspiration for the town’s name in 1830.
In the 19th century, Mandarin was a farming community that supplied Jacksonville and northern cities with citrus and other produce via steamships on the St. Johns River. In 1814, when Zephaniah Kingsley bought land here, he brought his enslaved wife Anna Kingsley with him. After being set free by Kingsley in 1811, she took an active role in plantation management and bought land and slaves for herself.
The Union steamer Maple Leaf sank after striking a Confederate mine off Mandarin Point in 1864.
According to the censuses taken in 1870 and 1880, African Americans made up the vast majority of the population in the decades following Reconstruction. There are currently three churches in the area, the earliest of which was the Philip R Cousin AME Church, founded in 1886. Many years were spent planting orange trees across the majority of the land, but a freeze in the early 1890s wiped out a sizable portion of the crop. Rather than replace their lost orange trees, many farmers have sold off their former groves to construction companies.
Zip code 32223 is home to the Lofton Cemetery, where you can find tombstones with dates as far back as 1891. The Mandarin Cemetery sits on ground that played an important role in the Seminole Wars. There are also many notable tombstones from the 1800s there.
Northside
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