One week from tomorrow, on Saturday, September 25th, St. Petersburg residents will get the chance to experience Arts Alive Free Museum Day!  St. Petersburg’s major museums will throw open their doors and welcome everyone in, free of charge! This will be the sixth annual event, done in coordination with the Smithsonian Institute and Smithsonian Magazine. The event is taking place in many major cities around the country, so if you’re not near St. Petersburg, be sure to check your local media for details in your area.  But for St. Petersburg, I can tell you that you will be welcomed, at no cost, at the following great museums:

• The Dali Museum
• Dr. Carter G. Woodson Museum
• Florida Holocaust Museum
• Great Explorations Children’s Museum
• Morean Arts Center and Hot Shop
• Museum of Fine Arts
• Pier Aquarium
• St. Petersburg Museum of History

For more details, such as addresses, museum hours, description of current exhibitions, etc,  you can check out this link  on the City of St. Petersburg’s website.

And if you’d like a larger version of any of the photos shown here, just click on the individual image.

But recently, I was doing some research into a bit of St. Pete history, and, quite accidentally, I came upon a reference to the Braaf family and their beautiful property at 609 Beach Drive.  (In those early days, Beach Drive was the name given to the waterfront road that we now call Bay Shore Drive.)  What?  That’s where the Vinoy is!  A little more digging, and I learned what should have been obvious – that there actually was earlier development on the grounds where the Vinoy was destined to be built.  And why wouldn’t there have been?  This is one of the most beautiful pieces of property in the city!

As it turns out, there was a beautiful house and a large piece of property that was planted with all sorts of tropical plants, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Braaf, prominent St. Petersburg residents in the early 1900′s. Mr. Braaf owned a good deal of land in St. Petersburg in those days, and he was on the St. Petersburg City Council in 1912.  In the early 1920′s, this property was purchased by Mr. Aymer Vinoy Laughner, who then moved ahead and built the Vinoy Park Hotel, the finest lodging in the city.  Interestingly, many of the old trees on the west end of the Vinoy property today are trees that were planted by Mr. Braaf while he and his wife lived in their house there.

Although there’s not a great deal of detail visible, I found this post card online and purchased it so that I could give you a glimpse of what this Vinoy precursor looked like.  I wouldn’t have minded living there one bit!  The next time you’re downtown and you look over and see the Vinoy Hotel, just imagine this peaceful scene and the couple who lived here for many years before the Vinoy was born…

This public art sculpture, situated outside of the St. Petersburg Museum of History, celebrates the “Sunshine City” name, as well as our famous green benches, and even the pledge for free newspapers if the sun didn’t shine.  With the Sunscreen film festival in town this weekend, it just seemed an appropriate opportunity to salute our sunshine!

Many cities cede their waterfronts to private developers, whether for residential or commercial use.  But St. Petersburg’s city fathers, back when our city was just finding its stride, had the wisdom to preserve the waterfront for the enjoyment of all.  From Coffee Pot Boulevard south to Albert Whitted Park, we have 23 blocks of public waterfront, made up of 11 parks.

This year, the city is marking the 100th anniversary of our waterfront parks.  Throughout the year, there will be a variety of meetings, celebrations, and events marking the significance of this Centennial, and the organizers are soliciting historic photos and/or new photos of the parks.  If you’re interested in participating in any of the events or submitting photos, there’s an excellent website dedicated to the Centennial: StPeteParks100.org  The site provides historical background, an events calendar, and more.  There’s a poster that’s been designed for the Centennial (see photo below), and it can be purchased online or at various retail locations that are noted on the Centennial site.

A new exhibit opened at the St. Petersburg Museum of History last Friday night, blending HDR techniques with history in a way that should be very appealing to anyone who appreciates St. Petersburg’s past.  The exhibit is called “Images of the Past Meet the Photography of the Future”.  A museum curator selected 32 historic photos from their archives, pictures of notable St. Petersburg places from many years ago.  Then, a group of 14 photographers from the North Pinellas Photography Forum set out to recreate the historic photos in today’s world, using modern equipment and HDR techniques.  The exhibit involves the pairing of the historic image next to the new HDR image for each photograph. 

I attended the opening reception on Friday night and I was extremely impressed.  Many of the new photographs were stunning, and it was just very fun to see the old images recreated in this manner.   If you’d like to see the photographs, the exhibit will continue at the Museum for awhile – it’s definitely worth a trip downtown to see these photos!  For information about the Museum, including location, hours, etc, go to their web site. 

And if you would like to see a few examples of HDR photography that are my own work, check out these examples in earlier blog posts of mine: example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4.

Yesterday, I published a post about the Euclid Station Post Office in St. Petersburg, at the corner of 34th Avenue North/Haines Road/Dr. ML King Jr Street North.  I talked about the fact that the Post Office is on the list for consideration to be shut down by the United States Postal Service.  And I showed a photo of local residents attending a petition drive that was held there, where people could sign a petition to voice their hopes that the Euclid Post Office be saved.

Today’s post is a tiny little piece of history trivia.  For you who are not St. Petersburg residents and don’t know the area, I beg your indulgence – this post won’t likely interest you, so mabye you should come back tomorrow!

But for those who do live in St. Petersburg and who know the area of the city where this Post Office is located, have you ever wondered why it’s called the Euclid Post Office?

The answer can be seen in the snip of headline from the May 12th, 1924 edition of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent that I’ve included to the left of this text.  In truth, it’s not really a news headline – it’s a headline for an advertisement for Real Estate.  The copy in the ad read like this: 

 ”St. Petersburg’s new white way will be Euclid Boulevard,  Ninth Street North.  Many new stores and buildings are being erected on this highway because the trend of business is rapidly turning this way.”

“Each day sees increased activities in buying along Euclid Boulevard for the reason that it is already an important traffic artery and is becoming more so each day.”

“Good judges of Real Estate values predict that Euclid Boulevard will be one of the principal ways into St. Petersburg from the Gandy Bridge.  They contend that traffic will split at North St. Petersburg, the greater part of this coming in over the new county road and Euclid Boulevard.  This being very reasonable — it is acting as a stimulus to all property values along this way.” 

That ad copy from an 85 year old newspaper tells the story – the road that is now known as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street North, that used to be known as Ninth Street North, was originally known as Euclid Boulevard.

I found references to Euclid Boulevard spanning over a period of more than thirty years, so it was a well established street name in our city for quite some time. I don’t know exactly why or when the Euclid name was dropped and the road began being referred to as Ninth Street North, but maybe it was a part of the city’s plan to simplify and standardize all of our street and avenue names. 

Or maybe this little piece of St. Petersburg Police Department history had something to do with the name change: From the August 24th, 1952 edition of the St. Petersburg Times, in an article about the opening of our new Police Station, there was mention of someone who had a problem with spelling. “A classic bit of humor of that early day was the story they told on a patrolman who had been sent out to Euclid Boulevard to remove a dead horse. He couldn’t spell Euclid or Boulevard, so he dragged the horse over to Grove Street. And then wrote his report: ‘Found dead horse on Grove Street, removed same.’

We may never know the reason for the name change, but it’s fun looking back in time and seeing St. Petersburg through the eyes of those who lived here a long, long time ago…

But, while they were viable, they had showrooms,  just like other major auto companies all around the country, and St. Petersburg was home to one of them.  There was a Studebaker showroom built on the Southeast corner of 4th Street and 6th Avenue South by the Peninsular Motor Company in 1925, and when the showroom opened, the St. Petersburg dealership was the fourth largest Studebaker dealer in the world!  However, only one year later, Peninsular went out of business, and the showroom closed.  After closing, the building was used for many other purposes over the years. 

In July, 1985, the building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.  A few years later, in 1989, the United States Geological Survey moved into the building, and soon thereafter, they began a major project in which the building was completely restored and renovated.  In 1990, USGS won an award for outstanding achievement in renovation/restoration of a non-residential structure.  The building is still alive and well today, still home to the USGS.  It’s a beautiful red brick, Tudor Revival style structure, and it looks much as it did when it was first constructed.  The Studebaker signs are showing their years of wear, but if you look at the second picture below and click the photo to see the full-sized image, you can still make out the letters and see the logo, pretty much an exact replica of the logo that I’m showing in the top right corner of this post.

Studebaker Building (click on photo for larger image)

Studebaker Sign (click on photo for larger image)

Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American History Museum (click on photo for larger image)

Saturday was the Arts Alive Free Museum day in St. Petersburg, and my wife and I decided to take advantage of the event to see at least one museum that we had not visited before.  What a breath of fresh air!  We visited the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American History Museum, located at 2240 Ninth Avenue South. 

This new home for the museum opened in April of 2006 in a 4,500 square foot building that used to be the management office for the Jordan Park housing complex.  The building itself is pretty enough from outside, but the real exterior beauty is in the gardens in the rear, which are used for a variety of events, including a ’Legacy Garden Music Series’.

The museum building’s interior includes exhibit space, classrooms, storage for museum collections, meeting rooms, and a reception area.  When the museum opened in this renovated building, there was a contest held to help come up with a great name for the museum.  And the winning entry was chosen to honor Dr. Carter G. Woodson, an African American who lived from 1875 to 1950 and who is known as the Father of Black history.    Dr. Woodson, only the second African American to have received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, founded an organization called the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, now known as The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).

My Wife With Our President (click on photo for larger image)

The current exhibit at the museum, a very timely one, is a photographic exhibit entitled “Obama: A Perspective in Photographs”.  The exhibit is made up of more than fifty top quality photos of President Obama taken over the past year or so by various news photographers and by his personal photographer.  There’s a great deal of variety in the perspectives of the photos, from the very serious to the very playful.  They are truly a delight to look at.  And, for anyone interested, every one of the photographs is going to be auctioned off after the exhibit closes down on November 20th!

For much more detail about the museum and about past exhibits and events, you can visit their web site.  The site also provides the operating hours, membership information, and more.

While I was conversing with one of the staff members at the museum, she said that they feel as though they are a ‘hidden gem’ of St. Petersburg, tucked away and not yet well-known throughout the city.  I hope that my post does just a little to change that, because this museum is worth learning about and visiting!

Exhibition Room (click on picture for larger image)

Walker Bulldog Tank - Click for Larger Photo

I’m happy to see that the Powers That Be have taken our safety into consideration by ensuring that there’s one of these signs on each side of the tank!  Can you imagine the headlines we might be reading if the signs weren’t  there to warn would-be tank thieves and tank drivers away?  Chaos and destruction, without a doubt…

This tank was spotted at War Veteran’s Memorial Park, just east of the Bay Pines Veterans complex.  According the the descriptive information there, it’s a Walker Bulldog Tank, fitted with a 76mm gun, Model M41A3.  When it was new, it went for $87,941!  Seems like a bargain to me.