Accommodating up to 40 guests, it was shaded by wild orange, oak and magnolia trees and provided facilities for boating and fishing.īy 1885, the house was owned by Frederick Robinson, a well-known machinery manufacturer. Jameson opened the hotel, naming it in honor of his hometown, Rochester, N.Y. Isaac Jameson had bought the property for $1,500 in February 1868. Wood estimates that it was built in 1869. During its heyday, it also drew guests from New York, Rhode Island, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and other states. It’s the oldest remaining tourist hotel in Jacksonville, Wood said. He managed to calm her but also arranged to have her committed to a mental hospital.Īs for Rochester House, it has another claim to fame. When Robert tried to stop her, she screamed that he was trying to murder her. While they were staying at a Chicago hotel, she tried to go to the lobby in her nightdress. When Robert met her at the station, she was surprised that he seemed healthy but claimed that someone on the train tried to poison her, historians said. The operator sent Robert a message saying that she had left by train and was still convinced that he was dangerously ill. Although the operator tried to convince her that her son was fine, she left for Chicago that same day accompanied by her nurse. Robert Lincoln, who was in excellent health, told the Jacksonville telegraph operator to keep him informed about his mother’s mental condition. In a subsequent telegram, she told Robert to “rouse yourself and live for my sake. After sending a hysterical telegram to his law partner, she demanded that he contact her immediately. In 1875, historians said she developed an overwhelming fear that her only living son, Robert, was seriously ill. Historians said she developed such an obsession for privacy that she pulled down the shades in her Rochester House suite, and, believing that gaslight was a tool of the devil, used only candles to brighten her quarters. There’s no record as to whether it eased her arthritis, but mentally she grew increasingly confused. While here, she reportedly visited the sulphur springs in Green Cove Springs. It was the height of the tourist season, and she was there from November 1874 to March 1875, said Jacksonville historian and author Wayne Wood and other internet sources. She stayed at the three-story facility when it was known as Rochester House near the present site of the Florida Times-Union at Leila Street and Riverside Avenue. Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of Abraham Lincoln, sought refuge in Jacksonville from her arthritic pains. Dear Call Box: Tell me about the ornate blue and white house at the corner of Goodwin Street and River Boulevard.ĭear C.Z.: River House, as it’s now called, was once a hotel whose most famous guest was a presidential widow who was going through what historians cite as her “famous insanity phase.”
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