English: The gates mark the entrance to Venetia, a development founded in 1925 by Col. Raymond C. Turck on 500 acres of land in the Ortega neighborhood of Jacksonville.

Designed by architect Mellon Greely, the development was planned to be a Mediterranean-inspired community with a railroad station, a resort hotel, a yacht basin, and canals like those of Venice, Italy. Turck’s project was never realized because of the collapse of the Florida real estate boom in 1926.

According to a long-time resident, a man who had lived there since the 1930s, there were only 32 houses in the area then and no street markers, and Ortega Boulevard was a brick road that ran all the way to Green Cove Springs.

The gates had an electric light suspended from the center of the ornamental iron work that stretched from pillar to pillar.