Archive for the ‘Pensacola’ Category
After School …
This panorama shows the corner of 12th Avenue and Gonzalez Street around 1956 or so … not sure about the exact date as usual. You can see all of the kids milling around because Clubbs Junior High School had just let out. Clubbs was located just two blocks of this intersection. Since this was the only area around that had any stores. all the kids headed in this direction so they could go to the Shaw’s Drug Store, Friendly Service, Winn-Dixie or Ginn’s Restaurant. You can see that 12th Avenue was still paved with bricks and I can remember that fairly well. Anyone have any comments about this time in their lives, please feel free to comment … who knows, that might be you standing on that corner? Thanks for looking … Frank
PS – I was too young in this photo … I did not get to Junior High until 1965 and I went to Workman, since we lived in Cordova Park. I had friends that went to Clubbs and they used to talk about this, but personally I never did.
San Carlos Hotel in the 1940’s …
This is a photo that my father made sometime in the 1940’s … note that the front of the hotel facing Palafox Street does not have the” San Carlos” sign on the top of the building that you see in the photo from around 1955. Also notice that people are walking / crossing in the middle of the street. It is as if the center median just extended across Garden Street. The traffic at this intersection must not have been busy enough to bother these people walking in what seems all directions, although there seems to be quite a few cars on the road.
John Wayne and Friend …
This is John Wayne and an unknown ” friend ” photographed at The Townhouse Motor Lodge when he was in Pensacola filming a movie. Never could find out who the lady is … anyone that has any idea, please let me hear from you. I have no back ground information on this other than what I have mentioned. The name of the movie that John Wayne was making at the time was called, ” Wings of Eagles ” . The part that showed Pensacola was only the first ten minutes or so of the movie and it was filmed out at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. Thanks for looking ….
Operating Room at Old Sacred Heart Hospital …
I do not know if this photograph was ” set-up ” or if this was an actual surgery. Look at the knife that the nurse or doctor is using on the patient … I used to have a scuba diving knife that looked better that the knife she is using. I do not have any information on this photo, I just think that it looks interesting, scarey, but interesting. I had my tonsils removed at the old hospital back in 1959 and I can remember it very vividly. Back in those days, they dropped ether to put you to sleep. I can remember a nurse standing over me, placing a mask over my nose and telling me to count backwards from 25. When I hit 10 I thought that I was going to throw-up and when I hit 5, I was out!
If anyone wants to share their old Sacred Heart hospital memories, you are more than welcome to here …
Ambulance / Hearse at Old Sacred Heart Hospital …
My father made this photograph in back of the old Sacred Heart Hospital sometime in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s. This circular drive way is still at the old hospital today. You can see a sign in the second window that says ” Morris Funeral Home ” and in the third window ” Ambulance ” is written on the glass. So my guess is that this vehicle stayed pretty busy back in it’s day. The photo was in very bad shape and it took me quite a while to repair the image. It also had been posted on the old site, but it did not have the matting around the image. I was surprised that it did not generate any comments from anyone, since it is such an unusual image. No idea who the nurse is in the photo … notice how she is wearing her cap at such an angle – I am sure it has something to do with style and attitude and not uniform regulation!
Any and all comments are welcome … I would be interested in knowing from anyone if the ambulance / hearse was backed up the area that was the entrance to the morgue. I believe that the entrance to the emergency room would have been located to the left of the front on the vehicle, because I can remember going down into the emergency room as a kid and it was not was not where this vehicle is located. Thanks for looking …
Gilmore’s Furniture Store …
This business was located down on Garden street. Coastal Bank is located in this spot now. This corner had a special meaning to my dad because when his family left Muscogee, FL, they moved to this corner where his mother ran a rooming house that was located on this corner back in 1925. I will share some stories of his in some later posts of this time in his life and living in downtown Pensacola in the late 1920’s. Thanks for looking …
Pensacola Bay Bridge …
This is one of my favorite photos … mainly because of the clouds. The grass in the fore-ground would be Bayfront Parkway today. This photo was made around 1951 or 1952. Below is a photograph that Billy Tarbuck sent me a while back that shows the bridge from over by the train trestle on 17th Avenue, which actually shows the bridge better than in this photo.
You see the building by the bridge entrance better from this angle than from the first photo and the bridge is closer. One thing that was not built in the above photo was the Wayside Park with all of it’s picnic tables. In fact, it does not look as if there was enough land to have built the park along with the parking lot that was with the park, so that land must have been filled in later to build the Wayside Park. My thanks to Billy for sending me this photo …
Pat Duncan’s Card Shop …
Pat Duncan’s, looks like it is a Hallmark Card shop. My guess would be that it could have been located out at Town and Country Plaza, but as usual, I do not know the location of the business. It must have been in the 1960’s sometime, since if this is Town and Country Plaza, I do not believe it was built until the 60’s. All comments are welcomed … thanks for looking.
Baylen Street …
This is Baylen Street 1955 / 6 or later. You are looking toward Government Street. My father was standing were the Judicial Center would be located today. You see a Markham System business in front of you, which is no longer there. The attorney’s building on the right side is still there, it used to be Mr. Richard Merritt’s law office and now houses several lawyers. Where the Markham business used to be is now a parking lot. My father was taking this photo for Richard Merritt showing the exterior of his office building on the right side of the frame. I have some photos of the interior of the law office that I will post later. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
UPDATE … 18 Aug 13 – I mistakenly identified this street as ” Spring Street ” when I posted this image back in June of 2011. It never really dawned on me that this was not Spring Street until the other day … Spring Street in one block over to the west. In the past, Baylen Street traffic was one way heading North and Spring Street was one way headed South. These streets were that way from the 1970’s until the late 2000’s, maybe 2008 or 9. As you can tell from this photo, the traffic flowed both north and south on Baylen Street back in the 1950’s by the way the cars are parked in the street. Thanks … Frank
Spearman Brewery …
The next several posts are new and were not on the old site. This is a photo of Spearman Brewery that my father made. The brewery was located on Barrancas Avenue, just down from Government Street. I do not know any of the history of the plant / beer, but would be interested in hearing some. Note how the top of the main building flares out at the top. That is something that you seldom see in building construction today. When the building was torn down, the steel framing was left in place for years and was left there for what seems to be 10 or 20 years. I can remember the steel frames up in the 1970’s and some of the 80’s when I used to go down to Coast Photo further down Barrancas. I am interested if anyone has any comments on this photo … I will have to add this to my list of places to look up when I go back down to the Pensacola Historical Society. Thanks for looking.
Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two 
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