Posts Tagged ‘Pensacola Florida’
Coffee Cup Cashier …
This is only photo in my father’s files that I have of the Coffee Cup and it was made sometime back in the 1950’s. Look closely at the post card rack and you will see his photo of the Hotel San Carlos that I have posted on this blog several times. No clue who the lady is, I am sure that someone will recognize and identify her. The counter looks exactly the same today, some sixty years later. The photo was taken for the Cancer Society … here is one more photo …
I have not been in the Coffee Cup in a year or so, but I would not doubt if that same cash register is still sitting there. Now that I am thinking about the Coffee Cup, I am starting to get hungry for some biscuits with their famous tomato gravy. I guess that you would have to be raised in the South to appreciate tomato gravy and one more thing … they have the creamiest grits that you have ever tasted. I would go tomorrow and eat breakfast, but you regulars know how crowed that place is on a Saturday morning. If you do not get there by 6 or 7am, you will usually have an hour wait. That’s it for me now, I will be posting some more in the next few days … Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Pensacola Sign Company …
I could not read the writing on the negative envelope, so I am not sure if the sign company read ” McCurley ” or ” McCurdy “. However, it does not really make any difference. I believe that this business was located at W Street and Navy Boulevard where the Mercedes – Volvo dealership is today. I could be wrong with this, but for some unknown reason I believe I remember seeing this corner looking like this. And besides, the building in the background looks like the laundry cleaning business that is still there today. The next business I believe was located out on North Davis, just beyond West Florida Hospital …
The last sign is just a poster that went up in the 1950’s before the Interstate was built …
I have several long posts ready to go and will put them up in the next week or so. Thanks for looking and please check back … Frank
Hall’s Spic-N-Span Laundry …
As usual, I know absolutely nothing about Hall’s Spic-N-Span. In fact, I am not even sure if I have posted them before. I do not think that I have posted them on this site yet … I might have put them up on the first blog I had over on Blogger. If any of you remember anything about Hall’s, please feel free to share it with us. This was made sometime in the 1950’s. Here are several more …
Since this was the 1950’s, you know that this building was not air conditioned. You think the temperature reached 110 degrees in the hot Florida summer inside this building with all these machines running?
These ladies look pretty fresh, so it is must be early in the morning or either it is a nice fall day. I have a good number of posts ready to go, so I will put a few up in the next week or so. Thanks for looking and please let me hear from you …. I hope everyone has their Christmas shopping done … if anyone to purchase any of images for Christmas gifts, it is still time. If you have any questions, please contact me … 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
The Hardy Collection Negatives …
Several years ago, after I had culled through about eighty boxes or so of negatives that had been stored in a room off of my parent’s garage, I gave sixty boxes or so of negatives from the 1950’s and 60’s to what was then called The Pensacola Historical Society. They in turn went through all of them and put them in new glassine sleeves and envelopes. Personally, I can not believe all of the time that was spent on preserving all of these negatives. You are looking at five rows with around twelve legal sized boxes per row. These are from the 1950’s to the early 1960’s … maybe 1962. I think I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I did not have a photo of all of the negatives cataloged by year. I personally want to thank Jacquelyn Wilson for all of the time and effort she spent on undertaking this huge project … you are looking at easily over 100,000 negatives / images and this is just from twelve years or so. If anyone has any questions about any of these negatives, feel free to contact the Historic Trust ( their new name since they are now part of The University of West Florida ) in downtown Pensacola with any of your questions… 850-595-5840. They also have lots of archived images that you can look through and purchase for your own personal use. Sure is a lot more personal way to decorate your home, your office or whatever area you have that you want to decorate. I still have thousands of negatives and those are what I have selected to put here on this blog. You can also contact me and I can share with you what little I know … Thanks again for looking and please check back … 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
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
Fiesta Car Wash …
I had posted something on the Fiesta Car Wash on the other blog, but I cannot remember ever posting anything on this blog. There are more negatives on this car wash and I will post them when I run across them. This was before my time, so I do not know where this car was located or anything about business in particular. I have a lot of negatives that I need to scan and I plan on to in the not too distant future. If anyone remembers the Fiesta Car Wash, let us hear from you. Thanks again for looking and please check back … Frank
Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two 
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