Serena Patel and Marjan Mardanzai walked along the Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail Sept. 13, visiting the spots that “make Gainesville Gainesville.”
But the 25-year-old UF graduate student and 24-year-old UF alumna may not have realized the spot that made Gainesville sits less than 0.1 miles from the trailhead: Boulware Springs.
In the 1850s, residents met at the historic site to establish Gainesville as a community and the Alachua County seat, said Steven Noll, a UF history professor.
Forty years later, Boulware Springs became the city’s primary water source. And roughly a decade after that, UF moved from Lake City to take root in what would later be called The Swamp.
At least, that’s the story that’s been shared for roughly five generations — and boasted on the former waterworks’ sign. But Noll said it hasn’t been proven.
“We're not sure if that's true or not,” he said, “but it's a great story anyway.”
But more than a century later, the historic site sits in a state of disrepair.
What used to be the city’s waterworks is now an abandoned building with boarded-up windows adorned with graffiti. Signs taunting future renovations are plastered across the building and its perimeter, nearly overshadowed by the weeds that have taken over it and the surrounding spring.
Noll said this isn’t the first time Boulware Springs has been on the decline.
Its deterioration began after it was demoted to a secondary water source in 1913 and abandoned in 1977.
The city restored it in 1990 with the goal of making it a rental event space, but it was unsuccessful. The building closed to the public in 2020.
However, the city has been working on renovation plans since 2022, according to a Gainesville City Commission presentation.
Projects like these are difficult and time-consuming, City Commissioner Bryan Eastman said, because renovations are complicated by factors like historic buildings and water.
“It's been on the list of things to work on,” he said. “We've just not gotten through and moved forward on breaking ground and getting a focus on it yet.”
The project is being redesigned this fall, and renovations are expected to begin the following year, according to the city’s website. The plan currently accounts for building renovations, a new parking area, a restroom, a pavilion and improvements to site lighting, landscaping and stabilization.
The project will return to the commission for approval before renovation begins, Eastman said, where the community will be able to provide feedback.
The city is looking at ways to turn the building into a community space, like a brewery or bike shop, he added.
“It's a beautiful space. It has a lot of history in the city of Gainesville,” he said. “We need to make sure that we're doing [renovations in] such a way that it can be used and that it can be operated for the future.”
Contact Grace Larson at glarson@alligator.org. Follow her on X @graceellarson.
Grace Larson is a second-year journalism student and this Fall's metro editor. This is her fourth consecutive semester on the metro desk, having previously served as commission reporter, K-12 education reporter and editor. If she's not editing an article, you can probably find Grace working out, antiquing or crafting.
