Sunbelt Florida (233320)

Scope and content:

Photo archive of 70 items including 34 silver gelatin photographs with 36 corresponding and original large format negatives and 15 studio sleeves with some annotations, ranging from 3" x 5" to 4" x 5", Clearwater, Florida, circa early 1950s. Storefronts and signs identify Billie Moran Hair Stylist, Spotlite Cleaners Launderette, Family Loan Co. Loans, Lane's Pharmacy, Harris Drive In Pharmacy, and a downtown block with the Capitol Theatre marquee and McCrory's along a traffic-filled street. Other scenes include audio equipment demonstations, musicians performing before seated audiences, children handling rabbits, a youth band rehearsal, commercial laundry workers, golfers near a clubhouse, and staged presentation or prize events. Original sleeves stengthen the local identification, with handwritten client names, addresses, dates, and job numbers including "Postal Office U.S. Post Office," "P.G.A. Clinic," "Family Loan Office," "Lane Pharm," "Harris Pharmacy," and "Helpy Selfy Laundry." More scenes place people inside the social and commercial interiors of the city: a woman stands before a seated audience in a hall draped with streamers; children and an adult handle rabbits in what appears to be a club or youth program setting; a school band director leans into a room packed with young musicians and music stands; workers stand at wash stations in a commercial laundry; golfers pose and shake hands near a clubhouse; a woman and man stand on a small platform before a seated crowd during what appears to be a staged presentation or prize event.

These scenes belong to the years when Florida's west coast cities were advertising modern storefronts, widening their commercial appeal, and absorbing the population growth that followed World War II, air conditioning, road building, and the state's aggresive promotion of itself as a place to live, shop, vacation, and retire. For insituttional collections, the group supplies named evidence of how a single city looked and conducted business during the first great Sunbelt surge: not only landmark buildings and downtown traffic, but service counters, display windows, local entertainment, children's programs, and the ordinary businesses that usually vanish first from the record. Light wear, minor surface handling, and extected age toning to prints and negatives, with some sleeves worn from studio use; overall in very good condition. A strong regional archive of Clearwater's commercial and civic life, still anchored to the working paperwork that identifies who hired Fulmer and what parts of the city he was asked to record.

(From seller's item description).

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