Archive for the ‘Pensacola’ Category
Pro-Golfers Back In The 1940’s …
The above photo is of Byron Nelson. The next one is of Sam Snead …
The guy in the background is Jug McSpadden with Sam Snead in the foreground. The next two are golfer Craig Wood …
I do not know which golf course these gofers were playing … back in the 1940’s, I believe that the only two courses in the area were either NAS or Pensacola Country Club. I am pretty sure that Osceola was not around in the 1940’s and Scenic Hills was not built until the 1960’s. I am sorry that I do not have anymore information, but someone out there might remember these golfers passing through Pensacola. I am fairly sure that they were playing an exhibition, since Pensacola did not have a professional tournament until the 1960’s. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Concrete Supply Company …
I do not know anything about Concrete Supply Company, I ran across these the other day and thought that they looked interesting. It must have been a huge operation with all of the trucks that they operated. These photos were made on August 24, 1956, or that was the date on the negative envelope. The construction business in Pensacola must have been booming during this time for this company to maintain and operate so many trucks. Here are a few more photos …
I have no idea where this business was located, but it sure took up a lot of property somewhere in Pensacola. If you have any information regarding this business or the concrete business in general, please feel free to share it with us. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Nurses At Sacred Heart Hospital In The 1940’s …
Staying in the 1940’s, I scanned some prints that my father had made at the old Sacred Heart Hospital. The three that I am posting are ones that I just scanned in the past several days … mostly because they did not require too much Photoshop work to get ready to put up on this site. This first one has always been interesting to me and for some reason or another I have just never gotten around to scan it. The next is a group of nurses on the steps out front of the hospital …
Note all of the ivy on the walls out front of the hospital and also notice the round globe lights … I do not think that I have seen these before, maybe I have but I just do not recall at the moment. The last one is of the nurses in the nursery with a newborn …
Notice the ” S C ” on the nurses pocket that stands for ” Sister’s of Charity “, the order that ran the hospital. I wish I had more information to share with you about these images, but maybe someone out there might recognize some of the nurses in these photos and know something to share with us. I will say that these images from the 1940’s and earlier are all prints that I scan … that accounts for the color of the images, which I think is interesting. I could take the color out in Photoshop, but for some reason I like the color and tone of the images. I will not necessarily that they have aged this color as much as I believe some where printed on a ” warm ” tone paper. The images that are more black and white might have been printed on a ” cold ” tone paper. Thanks for looking and if you know anything about any of these images, please feel free to comment. Thanks for looking … Frank
Nurses Out Front Of Sacred Heart Hospital 1940’s …
These two nurses are standing out front on the lawn of the old Sacred Heart Hospital …in the background to the left you see the base of the marble stairs. As usual, I have no clue who these young ladies are. I have had this photo lying around for years and have just never posted it for some unknown reason. If anyone has a clue who these nurses are, please feel free to share it with us. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Clubbs Junior High School Cheerleaders 1956 …
I thought that I would post a couple of photos that I have been sitting on for years and just never got around to doing anything with them. I ran across the scans of the negatives just the other day and they were in good shape and they would not take a lot of Photoshop work to get them ready to post so here they are. As usual I have no clue who any of the girls are in the photo, but I have a good friend who’s sister went to Clubbs during this period and I know that she can identify a few of the girls in the photo if not all of them. I have more of this same group of cheerleaders that I will get ready and post later. How many of you out there can remember a good old Clubbs cheer? I wish that I could find some action sports shots, but all that I have run across are team photos. If anyone out there has any photos from the football, baseball or basketball games, let me know. I would be interested in scanning them to post on the blog. Also, any PHS sports teams in action would be something that I am interested in seeing. I found some basketball action photos against PHS and Escambia when Coach Beck was coach at PHS. I will find them and post them in the near future. One more thing, if anyone out there has any photos of the PHS teams in action let me know, especially the football teams of the 1950’s and 1960’s. My father went to every home game during those years and I know that he was on the side-lines making photos for the yearbook. If anyone out there has any of these old photos, pleas let me know because I would be interested in seeing them. Everything that he had from this era was lost in the fire of 1975. Here is one more of the cheerleaders …
Thanks again for looking and if anyone has any of the photos mentioned above, contact me through this blog. I have connected these blogs with Facebook in hopes of getting more viewers and it has helped somewhat in getting me some new readers. However, I rarely ever go and check my messages on Facebook. If you have a comment or want to send me a message, please do it through either one of my blogs. Thanks for looking and please let me hear from you … Frank
Re-Worked Images …
No … I have not been in jail … or the hospital … or have I died …. I have just been busy with other things over the past few weeks and have not been posting any images recently. One thing that I have been working on lately is re-working some of my images and putting a textured overlay on them. I am surprised at how much you can change the look and feel of an image by just adding some texture in Photoshop. The ” old-school ” way was to do it in printing on textured paper, but you were also very limited by the few printing papers that you could select or by running the finished print through a texture-creating machine. I have been doing some reading and found a technique that I that would be interesting and am starting to create some new images from old images. The image above of Pensacola Bay around 1950 is an image that I thought would lend itself well to texturing and I think that it succeeded. Also, a gift to my viewers, this image is an 8×10 full resolution sized file. So if you want to down-load the file ( right click and Save as … ) you can make a print to keep. Just call it an early Christmas gift. Most of all of the other images on this blog are sized for the web for easy loading and viewing … nothing bothers me more than having to wait minutes for images to load because the photographer was not considerate enough to resize the image or images. As usual, all comments are appreciated and welcomed. Please check back, because I forgot to mention that I have been doing some scanning a lot of new negatives. Thanks and please check back … Frank
Clubbs Junior High School …
The date ( I believe ) is 1956. Back then, schools used to put on these elaborate coronations and would crown a king and queen of the school. Clubbs Junior High School on 12th Avenue used to have a ” King and Queen of Clubbs ” and would also have a court. I would assume it was pretty much a popularity contest … the athletes and cheerleaders would make up half of court usually. I did not know this until I talked to a friend of mine whose sister just happened to have been elected the ” Queen of Clubbs ” a year or two after this coronation. By the time I was in junior high school in the mid-1960’s, these coronations were a thing of the past. At least they were at Wokman Junior High where I went. This event was held in the auditorium at Clubbs. By the time my friend’s sister was queen it had gotten so large, it was moved to the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Pensacola. I have several bags full of negatives that I will go through and post in the future. Here is the other view that I worked up …
This one still needs some more work, but it is passable for the internet / blog. It is not as sharp as I would like it to be. I do not remember what years the other years are and I will find the bags and look. If anyone out there happened to be in the audience at this year’s coronation, please share what you remember with us. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Pensacola in the 1950’s …
The first photo is one of Ginn’s Restaurant that was on the corner of 12th Avenue and Gonzalez Streets. You see the old Winn-Dixie Grocery Store to the west and the old Sacred Heart Hospital would be across 12th Avenue to the east just out of the frame of the photo. This photo is a panorama image made with a Wide-Lux camera that my father owned and was burnt up in the fire, which will be another post very shortly. Here is the image …
How about that old Cadillac parked out front on 12th Avenue? The next is just a parade shot from a Fiesta Parade back in 1955 … nothing spectacular about the image ( the Cadillac in this image is carrying the then Governor of Florida – LeRoy Collins ) and I have a better view somewhere in this blog already. But the reason that I am mentioning that here and now is that I just found movie film that my father shot of the 1953 and 1954 Fiesta Parades. Not the three inch reels , but full ten inch reels. And in Color! No sound though. I know that it can be transferred over to digital, but all of the quotes have been in the hundreds of dollars per reel and I am not that interested in spending the money right now. However, that does not mean that I won’t in the future … we will have to just wait and see. Here is the image …
Just imagine all of those horses and riders and cars moving across the screen in COLOR! For the time, this will have to do … but who knows what the future will bring? I have posted quite a few images from this vantage point ( ground level ) that my father has taken in the past. If you type ” LeRoy Collins ” in search field above on the right side, it should pop up … I have not tried it yet, but I am pretty sure it should because I know it is posted somewhere on this blog.
Thanks for taking the time and looking … I have been busy lately and I have neglected this site and my personal photography blog, but I have several ready to post and will get around to posting them shortly … Thanks for all the comments also … Frank
Pensacola In The Early 1900’s …
These are images that someone had brought to me thirty years or so ago to copy and make prints. I must have given the negatives to the person because all I have are the prints. The thing that impressed me about these images was how sharp they were. Whom ever the photographer was that photographed these scenes must have had an incredibly sharp lens, along with fact that were shot on 8×10 film. I have seen 8×10 images that were no where near as sharp as these prints. The prints that the person brought to me were contact prints, so I am sure that that played a part in the prints sharpness. The image above was of the Escambia Hotel. I have no idea where the hotel was located, but I would imagine that it was either in North Hill or in downtown Pensacola. I also believe that these prints were taken somewhere around 1910. The next one is of the train station in downtown Pensacola …
This is the old L&N Train-Station in downtown Pensacola. The Crown Plaza Hotel across from the Pensacola Bay Center on Garden Street is there now. The street in the back of the station is Wright Street. I can remember this station as a kid in the 1950’s. I would go down there with my father and pick-up packages that would come in on the train. The floor inside the station was black and white tile in these geometric patterns. It was all open – no air conditioning – and I always remember it having lots of people coming and going, sitting around waiting for their train or to pick-up someone or moving packages all over the place. I was too young to really understand what was going on, but it did fascinate me with all the activity. The next image is one of Ferdinand Square on Palafox Street …
The building on the left side of the frame is what today is called the TT Wentworth Museum. At one time it was the Pensacola City Hall. You can read the signs on the side of the buildings in this image and the ships in the harbor is visible. This park is still pretty much today as it was over a hundred years ago, except with more foliage from the trees and the shrubs. I do not put up many other photos from other photographers unless I think that the images are somewhat relevant to Pensacola or are related to other photographs that I have posted in the past. And I think that these fall into that last category … anyone from Pensacola can relate to these images. Thanks for looking and I have some more current images that I will post shortly. As always, all comments are appreciated … so if anyone out there remembers the old L&N Train Station or the Escambia Hotel, please let us hear from you … Frank
Muscogee Florida … Update – 22 July 14 …
These photos were taken in Muscogee Florida in the early 1900’s and I do not know who made them. My father was born in 1915 in Muscogee and lived there until 1925, when he, his mother, brother and sister moved to Pensacola since the mill – Southern States Lumber Company – closed down. I do not know who made these photographs or where my father got them from. If anyone has any information to add to any of these photos, please leave a comment. Also, if anyone has any information on Southern States Lumber Company or any other photographs, I am interested. Below is a photo of the mill and the other is just a view of the Perdido River back around 1900 to 1910 …
The photo of the Perdido Riv er is not much of a photo, but I think it shows how remote and isolated it was back in the early 1900’s in Muscogee. Just a stone’s throw from where the mill was located is the International Paper plant today and the rest of Cantonement. Next is a photo of my father and his first grade class …
The school in Muscogee was run by the lumber company for children of the mill’s employees and others that worked in businesses that had something to do with the mill. When the mill closed down in 1925, so did Muscogee and that is when my father and his family moved to Pensacola. Here are several photos of homes in the area …
For some reason I want to say that this was the front of the boarding house that my grandmother ran in Muscogee for the mill. When my father’s father died in 1918, the mill let my grandmother to continue to run the mill until 1925, when the town pretty much closed down. Here are a couple more photos …
Maybe this was a view of the boarding house, since I think I remember my father saying the it was two story. So, I am not sure what the first building is a photo of because it does not look like a two story building. UPDATE: Yesterday, I went downtown to the Pensacola Historical Society and they have moved back into their refurnished office space in the Beacon Building in back of the Wentworth Museum. They let me do some research on the Southern States Lumber Company and I saw an article that contained the front of the above building and it is the main office of the lumber company. I was incorrect in thinking that it was the boarding house that my grandmother ran for the company. The next photo is one that I believe was the post office in Muscogee …
There is a site that I found on Muscogee and here is a link to the site. It has some interesting stories about Muscogee and it is about the only information that I have found on Muscogee on the web, other than just mentioning Muscogee by name. The Pensacola Historical Society has some file on the mills and they are happy to direct you to it when you go downtown to their office in the Bowden Building. Thirty years or so I remember a couple coming by the studio and talking to my father about a paper they were writing on Muscogee for a History class they were taking out at UWF. I wish I could remember who they were, since most of the people who ever lived in Muscogee are deceased and not much has ever been written about the town. If anyone knows anything about Muscogee, again, please let me hear from you or has any photos from the mill, I would like to see them. Thanks for looking and I hope you check back … Frank
Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two 
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