Archive for the ‘Frank Hardy Photography’ Category
The Launch of the USS Pensacola …
This is almost a first me … I have actually done some research on the images that I am going to post today and I am going to include a link to more photographs for those of you might be interested in seeing more images. Two of the photographs are one’s that I have copied for a lady in the past and the other three are from the US Navy site that I am going to give you a link to at the end of the post. The first image is one from the Navy site that sort of starts the story of the USS Pensacola launch at the Brooklyn Naval Yard on 25 April 1926 …
You see all of dignitaries from the Navy and I know that there are several in this crowd from Pensacola … Harvey Bayless is one who was the City of Pensacola’s City Manager in the 1920’s and he could have even been Mayor at one time … who made the trip to New York and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Now the next photo is one that I had copied and showed the ship at a lower level being sent off from the ways. I am surprised that the Navy does not have copies of the prints that I am going to show and I can only think that maybe the ones that I am showing were shot by a photographer that the City of Pensacola might have hired in New York to record this event for them. I have not seen them in any local archives such as the Historic Trust, so without further ado …
Interesting don’t you think? The next photo is a Navy photo showing the boat coming down the ways from out in the East River …
Here come the Pensacola out into the East River. The next photo is one that I copied showing the USS Pensacola completely out of the dry dock and off of the ways out in the East River. I believe that the bridge in the background is the Manhattan Bridge. It possibly could be the Williamsburg Bridge, but if I am wrong, I apologize. At least I have a fifty-fifty chance of accuracy and for me that is pretty good…
Look how many tugs it takes to move the Pensacola around! I could have retouched out all of the trash in the East River, but I am striving for authenticity here and besides since this is 1926, I figured that the US DEP would be pretty lax around a naval shipyard. I do not know if we even had a DEP in the twenties, so there goes my claim for authenticity in the last sentence. Next and last image is a Navy photograph of the USS Pensacola ( CA-24 ) tied up at the dock…
In fact you can see part of the bridge I mentioned earlier. There are a lot more images of the USS Pensacola on the Navy here.
I hope you have enjoyed this little bit ” visual ” naval history and how I tied it all together. Don’t get used to it because I will be back to my old self of just posting photographs along with a few unrelated comments. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I have been posting more to Instagram than my blogs, but I have unearthed a lot of new negatives that I have sifting through and will post in the months to come. If anyone happened to be at the Brooklyn Navy Yard when the Pensacola was launched and want to share it first-hand, we would love to here from you. You can find me on Instagram at: frankphardy . For some unknown reason it would not let me do FrankHardyPhotography so I used my middle initial “p”. But you can type “frankhardy” into search and I pop up. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Pensacola Fire Department …
This is in the square at Palafox and Government Streets sometime back in the 1920’s. That is the Escambia County Courthouse in the background. Look at the facial expressions on the fire fighters … also look at all of the activity in the background. Everyone is busy and going someplace. Even though this is a black and white image ( toned actually ) it seems that black or some dark color is the predominant color for suits, dresses and cars back in the 1920’s. As usual I have no clue who any of the fire fighters are or what they are doing, but it doesn’t matter. Here is one more from a different direction …
Here you see the TT Wentworth Museum in the background, that at one time used to be the Pensacola City Hall. Even I can remember going down to the City Hall back in the late 1960’s and up into the 1970’s and doing business there. So it must have been in use up until the new City Hall down on Main Street was built back in the 1980’s. I have some photos that I took when they were building the new City Hall over on my other blog that I have showing my photography. If anyone knows anything about either of these two photographs, please feel free to comment. Thanks again for looking and please check back … Frank
Everglades On The Bay …
The Everglades Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami was built back in the 1920’s. It was finished in 1926, several months before the famous hurricane of 1926 that demolished a lot of South Florida from the Keys to Miami. I have seen several shows on this hurricane on the Florida Public Broadcasting Channel that have been very interesting. I have posted other photos from Miami and Miami Beach that my father had taken, but just ran across this negative the other day. The hotel was demolished back on January 23, 2007 and there are videos on YouTube showing the demolition if you are interested. If anyone has any stories that they want to share of their stay at the Everglades Hotel, we would love to hear them. I still have more negatives of Miami to scan and post, so please check back. Thanks again for looking and check back …. Frank
Home Show at the Pensacola Municipal Auditorium …
I am going to start off with this young lady displaying the new colorful rotary dial phones from Southern Bell and Telegraph. It comes in a variety of beautiful colors, however, since color film did not become used wide-spread until the 1960’s and this is 1956, you are just going to have to take this lady’s word for it. There is only one model of phone at the present time, but it does come in eight beautiful colors … as you can tell from the various tones of phones. Be the first on your block to get rid of your basic black phone … the start of phone envy!! Moving on to soft drinks …
Two magnetized Royal Crown Oven Mitts for only 50 cents and two RC bottle caps. I almost will wager that this is one of the first promotions in stores back in the 1950’s. It is hard to believe that before this time the retailers had yet to utilize store promotions. All of that untapped consumer advertising gone to waste for those previous years. Well friend, no need to worry, because in the next thirty years or more they would more than make up for years of no promotions. It is hard to even imagine the decades before without in-store promotions. And let’s not forget the radio stations and TV stations getting involved, along with magazines and newspapers. Your head should be spinning now in ” promotional heaven “… It has only just begun! Thanks for looking and if any of you remember this Home Show down at the Pensacola Municipal Auditorium, please let us hear from you. Thanks again … Frank
One More of Doc and Kitty …
This is one more of Doc ( Milburn Stone ) and Kitty ( Amanda Blake ) at the TownHouse Motor Lodge in downtown Pensacola with some young admirers. I have had this one sitting around for thirty or forty years and I kept saying that I was going to do something with it … so I finally did. I really don’t have any comment about the photo other it is a very nice photo of Amanda Blake, the lady in the center of the group. If anyone remembers meeting them when they were here for the Fiesta of Five Flags back in the 1950’s, I would love hearing from you. I have posted other photos and I do not recall anyone ever mentioning every seeing them or meeting them on their trip to Pensacola. I have a photo of them holding me up that I am going to finally post … it is really goofy of me, but what else is new?? Thanks for looking and do not forget that I mentioned that I have been putting a lot of photos up over on my Instagram account – frankphardy . I seem to receive more responses there than I ever had on my blogs, so that is why I have been neglecting my blogs the past few months. I will get back going on these eventually, because I still have a lot images that I plan on posting…Thanks again – Frank
Gull Point Community Center Play …
The negative envelope read ” Gull Point 3/26/56 “. Nothing more. The envelope contained around 40 4×5 black and white negatives. No names. No contact number. I found the envelope around fifteen years ago, along with tens of thousands of other negative envelopes and just set it aside from all of the other envelopes. School plays must have been a big thing thing in the 1940’s and 50’s, however when I came along in the 1960’s, they were a thing of the past. At least for me … I cannot ever remember being in a play or ever watching one at an elementary school, junior high school or high school that I attended. The only time that I ever got dressed in a costume ( besides Halloween ) was to dress as a carrot and walk in in a Fiesta Parade back around 1962 with my first or second grade class from Episcopal Day School. It was in the summer and it was hot. I was miserable, but I walked the whole parade route without passing out or fainting. I wish I could find a photo of us carrots walking up Palafox, I know I have one somewhere or someone has a photo of a pack of carrots trudging up Palafox Street in a parade. Now back to Gull Point … here are a few more photos that I have worked up …
If anyone out there remembers attending a play out at Gull Point Community Center in March of 1956, please let us hear from you. I do not know if this is the community center or if there was an elementary or junior high school back in the 1950’s ( before my time) and I am interested. The more I look at the photos, these look like elementary school kids and not junior high students. I will work on some more of these negatives in the future, so check back. Thanks for looking and as usual are comments are welcomed and appreciated, so knock yourself out. And one more thing – if anyone has any photos of a group of carrots marching up Palafox in the 1960’s, please contact me. Now the more I think of it, maybe we weren’t a bunch of carrots, but a bunch of oranges!! Well, either way, carrots or oranges, think of me…
Some New Images Purchased Off Of Ebay …
I posted this image over on my Instagram site and a lady identified this scene as the clock tower in Bern Switzerland. She goes by ” TrueColorChrome ” on Instagram and her specialty is colorizing black and white images. Here is a link to her web site and she is truly an artist. The work she does is amazing and people do not realize how time consuming the process is. She was also the one that located the city and country that this was taken. It was one of three negatives that I purchased from an individual on Ebay, of which two of the images I have already posted ( the market / street scene post one or two posts back ) . The next several photographs were taken in Paris before WW II…
The photographs were taken on Rue Royale in Paris. From what I been able to assume from looking on Google Maps and some other sources, the photographer might have been standing in the middle of Rue Royale and took the first photograph. Then he turned 180 degrees and took the second photograph. I was able to enlarge a sign on the right hand side of the image which read “Chrisofle”. This business is located on Rue Royale and here is a link to the Chrisofle web site ( it sells silverware ) and a map showing it’s present day location. I did run across a photo of this Rue Royale taken after WW II and the building across the street from this business had been completely destroyed. And the amazing thing to me was that the building at the end of this street was not bombed by the Nazi air raid. Now I doubt that the Nazi raid did not do this on purpose, because it is widely known that it did not bother Hitler if important buildings, museums, etc were destroyed or not. There is nothing special about either image other that the fact that they were pre-WWII and the seller was not asking much for them. I am surprised what seller’s are asking on Ebay for some unknown individual’s personal photos. I have seen amateur’s negatives going for thousands of dollars and they are nothing more than just random views of nothing … I have always said ” Just because it is old, does not make it gold ” .
That is it for now … If anyone has ever been on the above streets in Bern Switzerland or Paris France ( not Kentucky or Texas ) and would like to comment, please feel free. My Instagram account gets me way more views that my blogs have ever received and it is easier to access. So please feel free to see what I post on it and to leave a comment. Thanks again for looking and I am going to try to get back in the habit of posting more frequently in the future. For now … stay safe.
Unknown Negatives …
A while back on a post, I mentioned that if anyone had any negatives that they did not want to let me know. I talked to several people and the negatives they had, had that either been passed down from family members or they had acquired some other way … flea market find, garage sale find, etc, etc. Most all were just family snapshots, backyard picnics and vacation candid photos. Not exactly what I was looking for, so I did what any other red-blooded American would do … I went on Ebay and bought some. To me, almost all of the negatives that are posted for sale, fit into that category of family snapshots, backyard picnics and vacation travels. Knowing that I should have been more specific, I was not exactly sure of what it was that I was looking for until I ran across the negatives that I am putting up in this post … images showing everyday randomness from the 1930’s to the sixties. Now, the images do not have to show only America, but anywhere in the world … Europe, Asia, China, Africa. So, I purchased these negatives, scanned them and worked them up in Photoshop. They were in fairly good shape, requiring not much computer time to remove scratches, marks, stains, etc. And as usual, I know nothing at all about them other than the obvious – taken in the 1930’s or 40’s and somewhere in Europe. The location could be Germany or some place that speaks German judging by the words / lettering in the photos. There were three negative and I have worked up two. So here they are …
The first image is an overall view of the market and since the people look clean and well fed, I would say that it is pre-WWII. The second showing a meat market / stall looks as if there might be some type of rationing going on since there is not a wide variety of meat or sausages for sale. If anyone recognizes where this area is, please feel free to comment and share what you know with us. I have one more negative from this purchase that I will post once I get it cleaned up and ready. The last photo is really the reason that I purchased these three negatives and besides the fact that they were less than ten dollars. One problem that you find is that everyone thinks that what they have is more valuable than what it actually is … just because it is old, does not mean it is gold ( that is my own phrase ). There are some negatives on Ebay now where the sellers want tens of thousands of dollars for their negatives!
So, if anyone come across any negatives that fit the criteria that I mentioned earlier, before you throw them away, think of me. And, if anyone recognizes anything in these two images which would help me locate the place or the time frame of them, please let me hear from you. Thanks again for looking and I hope everyone had a safe new year … Frank
Community Chest … Part Two …
Here are a few more photos from the Community Chest. I do not know any of the people in front of the tally board … maybe someone will recognize an individual and comment. Some more photos …
If anyone remembers anyone on the boards or in the photos and wants to make a comment, please feel free. Thanks again for looking. This year is just about up and it really has flown by. No idea what 2016 has in store, but I am looking forward to whatever it brings. I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope you have a safe New Year. Thanks again for stopping by and looking … the comments are also welcomed. Stay safe … Frank
Town and Country Plaza …
This is a view of Town and Country Plaza being built back in the early 1960’s. The camera was a Wide-Lux Panoramic camera that used 120 roll film. I do not know who the developers of this project were, but I doubt that this was a local group. The road in the foreground was called ” Pottery Plant Road ” and was eventually changed to Fairfield Drive since the Pensacola Interstate Fair used to be located on this road before it was relocated to Mobile Highway. Here is one more view …
Back when this shopping center was built, no one could envision a shopping mall that would be enclosed and air conditioned. In fact, I am sure a lot of people at this time would ask ” what is air conditioning ? ” . If anyone wants to share there shopping experiences here at Town and Country Plaza, please feel free. Thanks for looking and please check back. And Happy Holidays to everyone …
Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two 
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