Fifth Avenue

fifth avenue

Gainesville, Florida’s Fifth Avenue/Pleasant Street Neighborhood is the city’s oldest, most intact, comprehensive, African-American neighborhood.  Settled at the same time as the City, it is nearly 150 years old, and contains an important element of Gainesville’s urban and cultural history.  The neighborhood, which operated as a “town within a town” during Gainesville’s decades of segregation, is bounded by NW 8th Avenue on the north, NW 13th Street on the west, NW 3rd Avenue on the south, and NW 1st Street on the east, as defined by the Gainesville’s Community Redevelopment Agency in 1979.  Many residents’ families have lived in this neighborhood for several generations.

 Several historic churches, including the Friendship Baptist Church and the Mt. Pleasant United Methodist Church, are still in operation, and the old Mt. Carmel Church, important during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, is under consideration for historic preservation protection.  The A. Quinn Jones School, from which all African-American students graduated until Alachua County’s desegregation, is still used by the School District. The home of long-time school principal A. Quinn Jones is now an African American History Museum.  The Glover and Gill Building, formerly known as Wabash Hall, hosted celebrations for the A. Quinn Jones School, and also provided commercial spaces.  The Wilhelmina Johnson Center, named after an African-American educator, has been home to the Cultural Arts Coalition, which hosts the Fifth Avenue Festival and other community enrichment programs, for several decades.  

Fifth Avenue, which became the community’s public center during the 20th century, is located west of NW 6th Street.

To propose changes to your neighborhood’s page please contact neighbor@gainesvilleneighborhoodsunited.org