Pleasant Street Historic District

NW 8th Ave and NW 2nd Ave, Gainesville, FL

Also known as NW 5th Avenue Historic District, Pleasant Street Historic District is roughly bounded by NW 8th Ave., NW 1st St., NW 2nd Ave., and NW 6th St.

The Pleasant Street Historic District is significant as the first and most important black residential neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida. Founded immediately after the Civil War, the area represented a transition in the status of black people in Alachua County from that of slave laborers supporting a rural plantation economy to one of freedmen seeking to establish a new existence of economic independence and cultural self-determination in an urban environment. The district also demonstrates the often curious ambiguity and contradictory social relationship that existed between black people and southern whites that allowed close physical proximity, since the southern part of the district is a historically white residential area. The district also has significance under criterion C, for containing a large number of late nineteenth and early twentieth century residential structures typical of a modest sized southern community. Vernacular structures predominate, but the district also contains a number of buildings that reflect the revival and romantic styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Pleasant Street Historic District is a National Register of Historic Places.

TAGS: All,All,19th Century