Live in Springfield

Springfield was cut from the old Hogans' Donation north of downtown in 1869 and named for a spring near where West Fourth Street now runs. A streetcar out Main Street from 1882 started the building, the city limits took it in in 1887, and after the Great Fire of 1901, which a bucket brigade held at the marsh along Hogans Creek, many of the burned-out families moved across the creek for good. The houses date from about 1885 to 1930, most of them plain two-story frame houses on lots 50 feet wide or less.

The decline was zoned in, and residents zoned it out. The City's 1925 ordinance classed all of Springfield as business, and families left for half a century. In 1979 Springfield Preservation and Restoration led the campaign that made it the first neighborhood in Jacksonville to change most of its commercial zoning back to residential; the National Register listed the district on 22 January 1987. This guide takes the City's local historic district, 517 acres between Hogans Creek, the railroads on the north and east and the street called Boulevard.

Every change to the outside of a house goes through the City. In a local district a certificate of appropriateness is required for exterior work, windows and siding included, and for site work such as fences, driveways and sheds. Staff can approve some applications in a week or two; anything that goes to the Historic Preservation Commission takes at least a month, and its fees run from $315 for an alteration to $495 for an addition or new building and $610 for a demolition. The City's design guidelines for Springfield are the standard. The neighborhood group, now Springfield Preservation and Revitalization, is a private nonprofit, not the City.

Half the homes are owned, and one in five stood empty. The 2020 census counted 3,768 residents inside the line, up from 3,460 on about the same ground in 2010, and one in five under 18. Owners lived in 875 of the 1,653 occupied homes; 477 of the 2,130 homes were vacant, and the census does not say how many were under restoration, boarded or for sale. Zillow's typical value for ZIP code 32206 was $129,026 in August 2026, down 2.0% on the year, but the ZIP held almost five times Springfield's population, so it is not a Springfield price. At 17.7412 mills for 2025, a homestead at that figure owes about $1,561 a year and a landlord about $2,289; at Duval County's $335,000 single-family median a homestead owes about $5,215. The City's garbage and stormwater fees add about $34.50 a month for a house, and Save Our Homes resets on sale. The arithmetic is on the Jacksonville page.

The creek, not the river, is the flood line here. FEMA puts 9.5% of the district in its 1% zone, along Hogans Creek on the south-west side, with 63 residents; the reference point is in zone X, and the preliminary map of 2025 changes nothing on the part it covers. The point is in no JaxReady evacuation zone, but 926 residents are in zone C. The sources read here do not say whether Irma's record river in 2017 reached these streets. Routes 1 and 3 run on Main Street, every 20 minutes on weekdays now and every 30 from 2 November 2026, and the First Coast Flyer's Green Line stops on Boulevard just west of the line.