The Outsider

Not far from the heart of Downtown, an eccentric artist left a lasting mark on the city that greatly under-appreciated him.

BY TIM GILMORE

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost five years since Walter Whetstone died on May 4, 2018, 81 years old. It’s been 10 years since I first wrote about the Whetstonian, which I loved even before I met him. Like thousands of Jacksonvilleans, I’d driven past and wondered about the strange buildings at the corner of Union and Jefferson streets.

In the new bicentennial edition of Jacksonville’s Architectural Heritage, Wayne Wood writes, “Writer Tim Gilmore calls Walter Whetstone ‘Jacksonville’s Great Outsider Artist.’” I do indeed.

I’ll always remember the day I first approached him. This gentle old man sat outside in a chair in the blazing heat wearing dress pants, a button-up shirt and tie. I didn’t know exactly how to ask him about the place, but he instantly invited me inside. It was the first time I heard him say, “If Smithson can have the Smithsonian, then Whetstone can have the Whetstonian.” Indeed the Whetstonian’s collections are no less varied than those of that most famous American institution.

I saw bottles and gears and old porcelain masks cemented into the walls. Around a bar inside that dated to its days in a pool hall, I saw old cigarette signs and whiskey jars, every kind of brass musical instrument, paintings of jazz bands and blackface statuettes. Between the original 1920s brick grocery building and a circa-1960s insurance office, I saw old carousel horses, barber poles, offset mirrors, a loquat tree and a tropical pine strung with Christmas lights.

Outside stood large tin plates on poles with quotes from famous architects I couldn’t help but apply to the Whetstonian. From Mies van der Rohe, “The structure is the whole, from top to bottom, to the last detail—with the same ideas.” And from Frank Lloyd Wright, “… every curve and line has to have real meaning; it cannot be arbitrary.”

“Outsider art,” or Art Brut, French for “raw art,” refers to the extraordinary creations of people not trained in the arts, driven by a creative urge as evident as any Picasso or Frida Kahlo ever exhibited. St. EOM’s Pasaquan, outside

Columbus, Georgia, and Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden, outside Athens, Georgia are Southern exemplars. So is the Whetstonian. While the place announces itself to passersby, its creator never did. If you were willing to listen, however, you’d be rewarded. “Yes sir,” he’d say, looking around as if to survey the whole of the once-vibrant black neighborhood of LaVilla, “there’s a lot of black history around here. Including me.”

Another day he was wearing a ballcap advertising “Whetstone Chocolates.” He’d visited the factory in St. Augustine and told them, “You’re Whetstone Chocolate, and I’m Chocolate Whetstone.” This was a man who found more freedom abroad in the U.S. Army than he did back home, where he couldn’t sit on a bench in a public park named for a Confederate veteran. I always marveled that Walter, as with so many black men and women of his generation, would be so gracious to this younger white man hungry for stories.

Once when he arrived at a ritzy hotel where he’d be staying to receive an insurance sales award, a white executive he’d never met demanded Walter take his luggage up to his room for him. He’d assumed Walter worked for the hotel and was there to wait on him. Walter smiled and sent the man’s luggage on. That evening, Walter stood up to accept his award and say a few words and saw the exec seated up close. The man looked up, recognized Walter, couldn’t meet his eye, and looked down for the rest of the night.

When I visited the Whetstonian near the end of 2016, something was different. He hardly said a word. Something was gone from his eyes. He’d suffered two strokes. Now Dot spoke for him. She and Walter had met just down the road at the Jefferson Street Pool in the late 1950s. They’d been married for almost six decades.

The Whetsones never felt much love or support from the City of Jacksonville, which had, after all, demolished nearly 50 square blocks of LaVilla for “urban renewal” in the early

1990s. The block that holds the Whetstonian nearly fell to the same carnage.

Even before Walter died, family members had varied visions of what should happen to this place. Some agreed the Whetstonian should be preserved the way Walter built it, but others thought all Walter’s “junk” should be picked apart and sold. The reality TV show American Pickers featured Walter on an episode. Lots of people told me all about it, but I’ve never been able to watch it. It seemed like watching buzzards pick at the life’s work of a man who could no longer explain or defend it. These days the Whetstonian remains in the family. I visit Dot at the two-story 1914 house in Springfield the Whetstones called home since the 1970s.

“We keep hanging on,” Dot says, with equal parts resignation and resilience. Since Walter’s death, the Whetstonian’s taken so many hits it seems personal. People have stolen artifacts, and building contractors, Dot says, have “taken me for a ride.” A large pickup truck rammed the building’s Union and Jefferson Street corner and a semi-truck ran into the back side of the complex.

When I say I always hoped the Whetstonian could be preserved the way Walter had assimilated and arranged his decades of accumulations, Dot lights up and says, “I know, I know!”

Though this house in northern Springfield was home, sometimes Walter liked to stay down at the Whetstonian’s upstairs bedrooms. He told me once how he sat on the rooftop at night and listened to his radio and watched the cars go by. In his prime with Gulf Life Insurance, he made the Million Dollar Round Table, an exclusive club of the best salespeople. Now, five years after his death, the Whetstonian still exudes his personality. I can only imagine Walter’s still up there, listening to Otis Redding, looking out over the city, watching over us all. u

Candid Camera

Built to Last

Anotable piece of Jacksonville architecture and a reminder of the city’s auto-making past is likely to be lost to the wrecking ball sometime in early 2023. Despite years of efforts to save the Ford Motor Company assembly building, a sprawling brick structure tucked in the shadow of the Downtown side of the Mathews Bridge, the 1920s-era plant is slated for demolition. In 1926, hundreds of workers assembled Model Ts using Henry Ford’s rigidly planned production line business model. Trains packed with car parts were able to unload at one end of the 160,000 square foot building and finished vehicles rolled out the other. The owners of the ten-acre property had applied for a demolition permit to remove the building, a request that was denied by the city’s Historic Preservation Commission. The owners appealed to the City Council, which unanimously overruled the Commission’s recommendation, allowing demolition to take place.

“Not every old building can be saved, nor should they be,” says Alan Bliss, CEO of the Jacksonville Historical Society. “A city is a place for economic activity, where its people can earn their livings. If the owner’s plan bears fruit, a new enterprise will appear at 1900 Wambolt St., employing skilled, high-wage workers performing ship repairs using 21st century technologies. That use of the property will be faithful to its industrial past. That the Jacksonville Historical Society will celebrate.” u

In the decades following the Civil War, photographer William Henry Jackson played a significant role in shaping public perception of the American landscape. During the 1890s, Jackson was commissioned by Henry Flagler’s East Coast Railroad to produce a series of images to promote St. Augustine as a tourist destination, the site of Flagler’s opulent Ponce de Leon Hotel. Since 1885, Flagler had worked to reshape the historic city as a luxury winter resort to rival such exotic international destinations as Italy and Egypt. Jackson’s photographs present a striking portrait of Gilded Age St. Augustine where leisured men and women play golf on the grounds of the old fort, a wagon stacked high with hotel luggage precariously makes its way along bustling King Street, and Flagler’s magnificent hotels feature prominently. “St. Augustine Through the Lens of William Henry Jackson” is presently on display at The Lightner Museum. u