JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In a modest neighborhood on Jacksonville’s Northside, surrounded by ordinary ranch homes and bungalows, you will find an architectural oddity.
About 15 homes along Trout River Boulevard and beyond feature colorful drainpipes, Art Deco stylings, look unlike anything else you’ll find on the First Coast.
“A lot of people call it the diner house because it looks like a diner," Homeowner Earl Futch said.
The home on the 9000 block of Water Street sits right on the Trout River. It was built in 1951. The flat-roofed home is wrapped in vinyl but its structure is poured concrete. Homeowner Earl Futch bought his home 30 years ago.
“I just like to style it. The house is unique," Futch said. "All the corners of the house are round."
The kitchen still has its original poured concrete countertops and aluminum shelves but its most distinctive feature on the outside, its flat roof.
"The cons are that their flat roofs leak," Futch said.
The drainpipes poking out along the roofline provide both drainage and decoration. Futchs' home is one of more than a dozen similar-looking homes on Jacksonville’s northside all either next to or only a few miles apart.
“I call them marine modern houses because they were unique to this man who came from Georgia, in the 1920s," Historian Dr. Wayne Wood said. “They are concrete block houses with a smooth stucco finish. They have rounded corners, many of them have rounded windows and doorways. The flat roofs have drain pipes that carry the water off the roof.”
Historian Dr. Wayne Wood says a man named King Solomon Rathel and his wife Marvel Funderbunk bought several acres along the Trout River during the Depression and started building. But they weren’t builders or architects.
“He was just a tradesman, who learned how to build houses by watching others do it and maybe by assisting before he came to Jacksonville," Wood said.
Former Jacksonville Public Art Director Glenn Weiss says the homes, all built between the 1930s and 1970s required tremendous physical effort.
“He had ramps that went all the way up and around on the scaffolding, that he would take the concrete himself after mixing it on the ground, and then rolling it in a wheelbarrow in order to build the building, including pouring the concrete ribs, which went on. So the amount of muscular energy that this guy must have also had must have been tremendous," Glenn Weiss said.
Though there are similarities, Wood says every house is unique.
“He intentionally did not make any two houses alike," Wood said.
This was the first home built by the Rathel's in 1938.
“Every two years, he would build another one. And the last house he built was actually a 1971," Wood said.
Rathel died in 1976. He and his wife are buried at Evergreen Cemetery.
Kevin Kenneth Young lives in a Rathel-constructed home on Turton Avenue. He says his home is solid but because it's made of concrete, it's not easy to make renovations.
"You want to involve architect before you do anything to one of these houses because they're old. They're strong, they're solid. I wouldn't trade this piece of property for any piece of property in the world. It's a headache, but I love it," Homeowner Kevin Kenneth Young said.
But Futch says his house has changed over the years.
“This inside bathroom led out to a window that opened up to the Lanai that was on the back side of the house. And that's all enclosed now. I believe that this guy built these houses so strong and over-built them that they're just never going anywhere," Futch said.