Venetia Elementary School Park

Acres: 7.6 History: This southwest-Jacksonville park is located in the Venetia neighborhood, named for the Venetia region in northeast Italy. A company headed by Dr. Raymond Turck, who was chief surgeon at St. Luke’s Hospital from 1910-16, began developing northern Venetia in 1925. And the school was built in 1942, on property acquired by the School Board from the Ortega Company. The development of Venetia Manor, in southern Venetia, began in 1951. Most of the neighborhood streets have Italian names such as Garibaldi Avenue, after the Italian nationalist. Timuquana Road, adjacent to the park, derives its name from the Timuquan Indians that lived in the area when the first Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century. The City and the School Board have a joint-use agreement for the park.