11 minute read
CELEBRATE THE SEASON WITH LOCAL HOLIDAY MARKETS
clothes and décor, baked goods, jewelry, soap, crochet wares and more! Live music with Jay Moody and the Hip Pocket Deli Food truck will be featured. This family and fur baby friendly event is free to the public. Follow @ pensacolaartsmarket on social media for more event details.
GULF BREEZE HOLIDAY ARTS AND CRAFTS SHOW AT THE CENTER
Gulfbreezearts.com Saturday, Dec. 11 from 10 am to 5 pm Gulf Breeze Community Center | 800 Shoreline Dr.
Gulf Breeze Arts, Inc. will be hosting a Holiday Arts & Crafts Show at the Gulf Breeze Community Center. Local makers and artisans will showcase a variety of artwork and unique craft items available for sale. The Holiday Arts and Crafts Show will be set up inside of the Community Center and guests are invited to shop for items through December 17.
ASHER AND BEE @ ODD COLONY’S HOLIDAY MAKER’S MARKET
stayhappening.com Sunday, Dec. 12 from 11 am to 4 pm 260 N. Palafox St.
The Holidays are coming, so it’s time to get ready for all the Solstice gatherings and celebrations as families and friends come together to celebrate the season. Asher and Bee Apothecary and Tea House will be a vendor at Odd Colony’s Holiday Makers Market and are bringing everything you need for gift giving and traditional celebration, from frankincense and myrrh to candles, elixirs and potions. Tea head? Yes, they’ll have all of your holiday favorites to keep you warm and well too.
PALAFOX HOLIDAY MARKET
palafoxmarket.com Saturday, Dec. 18 from 9 am to 2 pm MLK Plaza | Downtown Pensacola
Come shop local at Palafox Market and pick up a gift for yourself or your loved ones! Custom gift sets, a large inventory of houseplants, plant merchandise, terra-cotta and more will be available. Palafox Market hosts more than 200 local vendors, so come support a small local business.
KRAMPUS CHRISTMAS MARKET PETTINATO PLANT POP-UP
Sunday, Dec. 19 from noon to 6 pm Emerald Republic Brewing Company 1414 W. Government St.
Join Pettinato’s Rustic Roots for a Holiday Market hosted by Emerald Republic Brewery Company. Along with many other vendors, Pettinato’s will satisfy your last minute holiday shopping needs with its eclectic collection of house plants and handcrafted plant accessories, as well as wooden serving trays, cutting boards, resin jewelry and decor and live-edge wood. Follow @pettinatosrusticroots on social media for updates and complete event details.
Thank YouPensacola for a great first year!
TYLER KERCHER 850.390.4118 TylerKercher.com
www.bombshellblowoutbar.com
A Labor of Love in Old Seville
By Kelly Oden
In a town as rich in history as Pensacola, historic preservation is at the heart of maintaining our cultural authenticity.
While older homes and buildings require significantly more maintenance and care, the benefits to the community in terms of preserving history and character are well worth the extra effort. Local law firm Kerrigan, Estess, Rankin, McLeod and Thompson knows the value of such efforts well as they recently invested substantially in the restoration and renovation of their 140-year-old office building across from Seville Square and the results are nothing short of breathtaking.
Currently sitting on the corner of East Government Street and Alcaniz Street, the 5,000-square-foot antebellum stunner features a treasure trove of architectural details including a double veranda spanning two floors, carved columns and balustrades, tall double doors to the veranda, Queen Annestyle millwork, broad bay windows and a gabled roof with a short portico.
The building also has an interesting history. According to beloved Pensacola historian, the late John Appleyard, Benjamin Overman originally built the home in the 200 block of East Gregory Street. Overman, who hailed from North Carolina, came to Pensacola to join his friend, Ezekial Simpson, in the burgeoning lumber industry. Simpson Mills became a great success, perhaps in no small part due to Overman’s innovative engineering skills. Interestingly enough, Overman also designed a number of significant local structures including the beloved St. Michael’s Catholic Church.
In the 1960s, the city began a project to widen East Gregory Street. The Overman house was no longer owned by Benjamin’s descendants and would have been razed, but as luck would have it, a local architect named Hugh Leitch purchased the property. Leitch had to have the building cut in two in order to move it to its current location at 400 East Government Street in the Seville Historic District.
In 1978, Bob Kerrigan and George Estess bought the building to house their young law firm. At that time, Kerrigan did some extensive restoration to the property’s interior woodwork. “All of the window casings and baseboards are the original oak, but all this beautiful wood trim was covered in layers of paint,” said Attorney Mike McLeod, who has been a partner of the firm since the early 80s. “Bob Kerrigan had more than 100 years of paint painstakingly stripped from all of the trim to expose the original oak. We’re very proud of that.”
Over the years, McLeod said the building held its own through many storms, including Hurricane Ivan. However, the building suffered substantial damage from Hurricane Sally resulting in the firm’s decision to do a full-renovation. As with most renovations, they encountered a few surprises along the way.
“Hurricane Sally was a wake up call,” McLeod said. “We had roof damage and we had water intrusion in some of the exterior walls. We had to move out of the building to repair it, so we decided to do a complete refurbishing. We put a new roof on. We had all the rotten wood from the exterior of the building replaced and painted the original color. A lot of the interior walls had to be removed down to the studs because we had wet insulation. Then, we discovered we had asbestos in two rooms of the building. So, we had to remove the asbestos at a significant expense. We had people in here with HAZMAT suits and they had to use negative pressure respirators. It was an expensive and complicated process for what seems to be just a little bit of removal.”
Beyond the structural repairs, the firm also took the opportunity to remove the carpets and refinish the original heart pine floors. All in all, the renovation included a new roof, new insulation, new ductwork, new sheetrock, asbestos removal, floor refinishing, new landscaping, new furnishings, new lighting and the exterior was completely renovated and painted.
“We think it’s money well spent,” McLeod said. “I think the older you get, the more you value older things. And I do think this building is the centerpiece of the historic district as far as real genuine old buildings that still look the way they looked when they were built 140 years ago. And now it’s as comfortable as being in a modern building.”
One thing that struck McLeod during the renovations was the original window mechanisms. “When we did the renovation we took all of the window molding off to have it cleaned,” he recalled. “Behind that window molding there are these big heavy weights. They’re very big and long and some of them have two weights and they are on these old ropes that create a pulley in order for the original owners to lift them. They’re still on the same old ropes. They’re still functioning.”
He also had a chance to see the original structural beams when some of the ceiling was being replaced. “It was interesting to see the old 140 year wood beams. They are so big and just about as hard as steel. They’ve aged and hardened over 140 years,” he explained.
The firm worked with interior designer Joy Hodges to update the furniture and lighting, bringing a contemporary and comfortable feel to the space. They also transformed the third floor space from a dusty old storage room to a sleek, modern employee lounge complete with skylights, television, a coffee bar and a sofa. Over the forty years the firm has occupied the building, they have watched downtown Pensacola grow from the neglect of the 70s and 80s to the booming and lively historic neighborhood of today—and they are thrilled to be a part of it all.
“While we do love the building itself, we also love the neighborhood,” McLeod said. “It’s surrounded by good restaurants, so you can walk across the street and have lunch or dinner. It’s right by Seville Park, which hosts a lot of festivals. On Friday and Saturday nights, it’s hopping right around our neighborhood. They have live music at Hub Stacey’s on weekends. People sit and eat outside at Dharma Blue. Over the last couple of years we’ve seen old buildings get refurbished. There’s kind of a new life to the streets. Downtown is a happening place to be. It’s the place to live and work. We’ve had opportunities to move into a bank building over the years, but we just like this location. We like being part of the neighborhood.” •
ON THE RIGHT TRACK:
WEST FLORIDA RAILROAD MUSEUM PRESERVES LOCAL HISTORY by Dakota Parks photos by Guy Stevens
Long before automobiles and airplanes, railways served as the beating heart of the Industrial Revolution, provided easier transportation of goods, safer travel for passengers and even led to the standardization
of time zones. Here in West Florida, the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad, chartered in 1881, connected Pensacola across the sparsely populated Panhandle through thickets of cypress swamps and pine forests. Along the 160 miles of tracks, two train depots were built in Milton and Marianna, the largest two towns along the route. Located within the historic Milton depot, built in 1909 to replace the original 1882 building that was lost in a fire, lies the West Florida Railroad Museum that is dedicated to preserving the local history of railways throughout our region and educating future generations to come.
The L&N Milton combination freight and passenger depot is one of the few depots in America that has not only been preserved but is also still located on its original working grounds. Guests can walk the museum complex exploring train memorabilia and still feel the rattling of a passing train beneath their feet as modernday trains pass the depot. The station was closed in 1973, purchased and partially restored by the Santa Rosa Historical Society. The West Florida Railroad Museum opened inside the depot in 1989, completing the restoration.
Train enthusiast and former pilot, George Wilson, has been volunteering and leading tours at the museum for more than 15 years. For him, the children running down the wooden depot corridors and marveling at the model trains are what keep him coming back. The museum offers public and private tours, class field trips and rental of its 1929 dining car for birthday parties and special events. In the winter, the museum also offers a Polar Express experience with hot chocolate and cookies inside the vintage dining car while volunteers dressed as conductors read from the book.
“We want to preserve the history and we want to make this an educational experience, but we also want it to be fun for children, so they keep coming back and learning more,” Wilson said. “We’re a railroad museum, so that means we teach about railroads. But I also teach a lot more than that. I can show you history about architecture, transportation, commerce, math, war, communication and technology. I can take you from the telegraph and morse code to the radio and telephone. This train station was the hub to the entire community. If you wanted to send a telegraph message or ship a package, you came here. There is so much history in these walls.”
The museum complex features the original train depot, the Bridge Tender’s House with a miniature HO model railroad depicting 1950s-era Northwest Florida, a section shed that rail workers used to maintain the tracks, the Garden Railway with an outdoor G-scale train layout as well as several vintage railroad cars. The railroad cars exhibited on the property include the L&N Dining Car 2722, L&N caboose 1148, Frisco caboose 1102, L&N boxcar 18050, L&N flat car 21107 and the former L&N baggagedormitory car 1652, which was used by the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1960s to
