Venues & parks
Portable restrooms at The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens
Holding something at The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens? The fixed restroom provision, the access and the permitting are the three things worth settling before you count units.
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is Jacksonville's principal art museum, pairing a permanent collection with historic riverfront formal gardens on the St. Johns.
Where it is and who runs it
On Riverside Avenue in the Riverside and Avondale historic district just west of downtown, on the north bank of the river; a private nonprofit museum.
Getting there
Riverside Avenue is the front approach, reached from I-95 via the Riverside Avenue and Park Street exits and from the Fuller Warren Bridge corridor, with visitor parking across Riverside Avenue and at the corner of Riverside and Post Street
Worth knowing
- Founded in 1961 from Ninah Cummer's bequest of her collection and gardens
- Over 5,000 works spanning roughly 2100 BCE to the present, with notable holdings in European and American painting and Meissen porcelain, drawing about 130,000 visitors a year
- Three historic gardens: the Italian Garden designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman in 1931, the English Garden redesigned by Thomas Meehan & Sons in 1910, and the Olmsted Garden by the Olmsted Brothers
- The Cummer Oak is a live oak of roughly 400 to 450 years, about eighty feet tall with a 138-foot spread
- A $1.3 million garden reconstruction followed Hurricane Irma, running from December 2018 to July 2019
Existing restroom provision
The permanent restrooms are inside the museum building, which works for gallery and auditorium events. Garden events are the pinch point: a 200-person ceremony on the Lower Tier sits out on the terraces above the river, well away from the building, and a full wedding day with a garden cocktail hour keeps guests outdoors for hours at a stretch.
Truck access
Riverside Avenue is a busy urban arterial with no on-site guest parking — visitors and vendors use the lots across the street and at Riverside and Post — so a drop has to be staged from an off-property lot and walked in. The gardens themselves are terraced, mature and historic, with the 138-foot span of the Cummer Oak overhead and Shipman and Olmsted plantings constraining both clearance and placement.
Permitting
No public special-event permit requirement was verifiable for events held inside the property; bookings and site conditions run through the museum's events office, which also imposes exclusive-vendor requirements. Anything extending onto the Riverside Avenue right-of-way would fall under City of Jacksonville permitting.
What happens here
The kinds of event this site takes
A substantial rental business across the Hixon Auditorium, the Uible Loggia, the Terry Gallery and both tiers of the gardens — the Lower Tier alone takes a 200-person ceremony. Wedding packages run five hours plus a rehearsal hour with an exclusive caterer and lighting vendor, alongside museum galas, member openings, lectures and school programmes.
What we would bring
Before you call
The Cummer Museum of Art - what people ask
The permanent restrooms are inside the museum building, which works for gallery and auditorium events. Garden events are the pinch point: a 200-person ceremony on the Lower Tier sits out on the terraces above the river, well away from the building, and a full wedding day with a garden cocktail hour keeps guests outdoors for hours at a stretch.
Riverside Avenue is a busy urban arterial with no on-site guest parking — visitors and vendors use the lots across the street and at Riverside and Post — so a drop has to be staged from an off-property lot and walked in. The gardens themselves are terraced, mature and historic, with the 138-foot span of the Cummer Oak overhead and Shipman and Olmsted plantings constraining both clearance and placement.
No public special-event permit requirement was verifiable for events held inside the property; bookings and site conditions run through the museum's events office, which also imposes exclusive-vendor requirements. Anything extending onto the Riverside Avenue right-of-way would fall under City of Jacksonville permitting.
A substantial rental business across the Hixon Auditorium, the Uible Loggia, the Terry Gallery and both tiers of the gardens — the Lower Tier alone takes a 200-person ceremony. Wedding packages run five hours plus a rehearsal hour with an exclusive caterer and lighting vendor, alongside museum galas, member openings, lectures and school programmes.
Yes, and those tend to want deluxes or a trailer rather than standards. Tell us the location and the crew size and we will size it.
Weekly is the default - a pump-out, fresh deodoriser, restocked paper and a wipe-down of the touch surfaces. Heavy use or a hot run through July and August is worth moving to twice weekly.
Planning something at The Cummer Museum of Art?
Describe the job and the access. We will tell you what it needs and what it does not.