In the opening title track to The Mountain Goats’ “Tallahassee,” lead singer John Darnielle sets the scene for the album: an ill-kept front yard, a looming moon. An empty two-lane road to the airport, half the college town population gone for summer.
“What did I come down here for?” he asks, grasping for a reason.
The album is about a toxic relationship spiraling downward in Florida’s capital city. But despite being “one of his most depressing albums about being stuck in Tallahassee—it’s beautiful,” Gallery 621’s Vice President Gabrielle Simpson said. “It has a funk to it.”[1]
The beautiful funk of Tallahassee is embodied by the Railroad Square Art District where Gallery 621, an established contemporary art gallery, and other creative organizations anchor of the community. The art park sits on an old industrial loop right next to the railroad tracks. For many people living in and visiting Tallahassee, the square provides an answer to Darnielle’s question of what makes Tallahassee worthwhile: What did I come down here for? To see art, to catch a cult movie screening at the city’s only VHS rental store, to have the spontaneous experience of showing up not knowing exactly what you’ll find. The square’s density guarantees an encounter of some kind.
Railroad Square’s reclaimed architecture is distinctly North Florida. The McDonnell Lumber Company built many of the eight-acre square’s warehouses in the 1940s when logging longleaf pine forests and cypress swamps was a major industry in the region. The repurposed wood and tin buildings with high ceilings are now covered in murals. The square has housed a rock gym, vintage furniture vendors, a local brewery, and the Tallahassee Buddhist Community.
“It is one of the most important places where young businesses and artists can take up real estate and do something,” Simpson said. However, the designation of “arts district” typically means that the space belongs, in some form, to the city and therefore the public, and comes with financial support. Railroad Square is privately owned.
That became a prominent issue a year ago. In May 2024, a trio of tornadoes touched down in Tallahassee. Two converged and tracked directly through the square, ripping metal roofs off of the old buildings.[2] Some spaces, like 621, were relatively unscathed. Others, like the Mickee Faust Club, home to a long-running “Theater for the Weird” troupe run by queer performers and disabled folks, were wrecked.[3] Few were insured.[4] The damages amplified recurring questions: Would the property owners sell? And if so: Who would buy? Ultimately: What happens to Railroad Square?
Its current iteration as an art park began in the late ‘70s. Nan Boynton helped transform the square, which she inherited from her father, from an industrial zone into an art haven by encouraging her artist friends to come use the warehouses as studios.[5] Soon, 621 Gallery emerged as a place for them to showcase their work, although it didn’t have a name initially.
“It was just a huge space,” Cynthia Hollis, one of 621’s former directors, said. “She just let artists do shows there because she was a big supporter of that, and they were all her friends.”[6]
In the ‘80s, the area still had a reputation as an industrial zone that people didn’t venture down to visit. Initially, artists and other creative people created their own community, throwing massive Halloween parties and other events “a little on the wild side,” Hollis said. Over time, there was a push to make the square more accessible. The standout example is the monthly First Friday gallery hop, which started in the 2000s. The galleries and businesses in the square agreed to stay open late and turn it into a public party that’s still an anchoring event, not just for the square but for the city.
When I was growing up in Tallahassee, there were few spaces that felt enticingly cool: Railroad Square was one. As a teenager in the late 2000s, I went to First Friday religiously. I was especially enchanted by the FSU BFA art students’ studio spaces. Housed in one of the biggest warehouses in the square, the studios were parceled into a rabbit warren of cubicles where students displayed their work, ongoing and complete, alongside art posters and photos and magazine cutouts and little notes from friends. It was the first time I encountered an open art studio. It was messy, and beautiful. I was drawn to the art in progress, and the artists making it. The BFA studios are no longer in the square, but 621 often shows work by the programs’ students and faculty.
Since I moved back home five years ago, some of the most dramatic changes in Tallahassee have been in the area around Railroad Square. Old gathering spots like the 24-hour All Saints Cafe and venues like the Beta Bar—where The Mountain Goats once played—have been demolished.[7] The area is filling in with luxury student housing, with four sites and hundreds of units currently in the works.[8] A year after the tornadoes, the salvageable units in the square have been re-roofed and repaired, but the area feels subdued. When I see the buildings now, I feel layers of nostalgia, both for what they were twenty years ago and for any time they have left.
Adam and Lily Kaye, Nan Boynton’s children, inherited the square when she died in 2002. After the tornadoes, the siblings announced they couldn’t maintain the district alone and pushed for the local government to step in. They gave Tallahassee’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), composed of city council members, the right of first refusal on most of the property, which was appraised in its current state at $6.4 million or $10.6 million in a “highest and best use” scenario, which would begin with demolishing the buildings.[9] The Kayes asked for the higher price. In January, the CRA voted against the purchase, but agreed to help with future tenant-led funding proposals.[10] The property has been parceled out into smaller bites, and the Kayes plan to hold onto about a third of the square.[11] Developers have been in talks to buy other parts of the property, but nothing has been confirmed.
Although the damage from the tornadoes renewed the conversation, the Kayes have been considering converting the square into residential property for years. In a 2018 Startup Grind talk hosted in Railroad Square, Adam Kaye laid out his vision: “I’m going to be a little unfiltered here,” he says near the end, before the audience questions.[12] “Look at us, look at this warehouse, look at these beams you see over here—just look at it—it is not something that’s going to last forever. Some of these buildings can be renovated. But it makes no financial sense.” The square could become a creative urban village, he said, describing a scene where residents could pick up their morning coffee and chat with an artist in their studio. “Whatever we do,” he says, “A, it will always have to be cool, and B, we always want to be the art district.”
Seven years later, this is still what people say they want —the Kayes, the tenants, the city: that Railroad Square should, in some form, remain an arts district for the community. But how that actually happens remains unresolved. Ultimately, it’s the Kayes’ decision who they sell to, and who they sell to will determine how arts, and the artists, figures into its future.
For now, the square is humming along, despite the limbo state. There isn’t a sale in process, although the current tenants are aware that could change at any moment.
“It won’t just be DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass),” said 621 President Josh Johnson, “where you put some graffiti on the wall, call it a cool place and invite everybody to come on the backs of artists. We’re not interested in it.”[13]
For now, the square is humming along, despite the limbo state. There isn’t a sale in process, although the current tenants are aware that could change at any moment. There’s an acknowledgement that a future Railroad Square might have some old buildings knocked down to make way for something new, ideally with a collaborative developer. They’re also exploring other options for the future of Railroad Square’s community. The ultimate goal is an art district for posterity—a district that can provide the “social, infrastructural, and fiduciary commitment to the art and the businesses that undergird art,” as Johnson put it.Preserving the square isn’t just about the historic buildings in their latest incarnation. “I’m saying that it’s not just the acreage that’s valuable,” Johnson said. “It’s us.”
[1] Interview with the author, Feb. 7, 2025.
[2] Ana Goñi-Lessan, “Tallahassee’s Railroad Square hit hard by possible tornado. See the damage from above,” Tallahassee Democrat., May 11, 2024, https://tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2024/05/10/tallahassees-railroad-square-hit-hard-by-friday-morning-storms-tornado-florida/73646774007/.
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Reimagining Railroad Square,” The Art District., https://www.artdistrict.com/future.
[5] Gerald Ensley, “Railroad Square Art Park began as sawmill, lumber yard,” Tallahassee Democrat. May 31, 2014, https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/2014/05/30/railroad-square-art-park-began-sawmill-lumber-yard/9778607/.
[6] Interview with the author, March. 7, 2025.
[7] Kyla A Sanford, “ Well-known Tallahassee music venue demolished to make way for student housing,” Tallahassee Democrat, Oct. 2, 2024, https://tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2024/10/02/well-known-tallahassee-music-venue-demolished-for-student-housing-beta-bar-cow-haus-gvo/75465574007.
[8] TaMaryn Waters, “Four-tiered development set to transform Railroad Avenue amid student housing boom,” Tallahassee Democrat, July 11, 2023, https://tallahassee.com/story/money/2023/07/11/student-housing-developments-coming-to-railroad-avenue-in-tallahassee-908-group/70384658007/.
[9] Lynn Hatter, “The CRA is likely to reject buying Tallahassee’s Railroad Square but a new plan could emerge,” WFSU, Jan. 7, 2025, https://news.wfsu.org/wfsu-local-news/2025-01-07/the-cra-is-likely-to-reject-buying-tallahassees-railroad-square-but-a-new-plan-could-emerge.
[10] Regan McCarthy, “Tallahassee’s CRA won’t buy Railroad Square, but a future partnership remains possible,” WFSU, Jan. 17, 2025, https://news.wfsu.org/wfsu-local-news/2025-01-16/tallahassees-cra-wont-buy-railroad-square-but-a-future-partnership-remains-possible.
[11] Interview with the author, May 9.
[12] Startup Grind Local, “Adam Kaye Rail Road Square Startup Grind,” December 6, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvHcMoKsv3M.
[13] Interview with the author, Feb. 7, 2025.
[14] Interview with the author, Feb. 7, 2025.
[15] Interview with the author, Feb. 7, 2025.
