Category: architecture

Crystal Ice House in Pensacola (2024 Davis St), built in 1932 and on the National Register.
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According to the National Register file, it was designed and built by Steve Fulghum, and is a “very unusual example of “Roadside Commercial” architecture” built of concrete block with stucco. The design was done in such a way so that the building could function as a drive-thru, and there’s a sign (top-middle of the front, can barely be seen now) that shows hand signals people could use to denote how much ice they’d like to purchase.

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Here, a visit we made to Newbern, Alabama, and of course we photographed the green warehouse William Christenberry made famous.

This is how it looked when he captured it in 1978 and here, the painting he made of it in 2008 in the permanent collection of LACMA.

We always see this pretty blue church in Houston, near Ninfa’s on Navigation.
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If you look at the sign super-closely, in those mailbox sticker letters (the kind you can get at Home Depot or Lowe’s) they list their clergy using three different Hebrew names for the Almighty.

This is the “Dome of a Home” at Pensacola Beach. The home’s shape helps it deflect a lot of the damage from incoming storms – there’s a lot more about it at their website. Oh! And you can rent it for vacations, too!

This is the Spaceship home on the beach, which is a Futuro house – there’s more about Futuros here.

After we left the Sucarnochee Folk Life Festival last weekend in Livingston, we headed over to Faunsdale, where they were having their annual crawfish festival. On the way, we saw this pretty church with a historic marker in front – it’s the Bethlehem Baptist Church:

The historic marker reads:
In 1867 a group of African American men and women laid the foundations for Freetown. William, John, Albert, George, Richard, and Peter Collins; Susan and Lawrence Moore; Thomas Jeffries; the children of John Jeffries; and Louisa Conway and her children received over six hundred acres of land in the will of John Collins, a local planter who had migrated from Virginia to Alabama in 1837. The early residents included former slaves and free people of color. Many of the men were skilled masons and carpenters, including Peter Lee and John Glascow who directed the construction of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Gallion. Freetown residents helped organize Bethlehem Baptist Church in 1867.

The other side continues:
Freetown became a vibrant community and residents achieved local prominence. The settlement reached its peak in the 1920s as part of Allenville. Brown’s general store established around 1910 became the major commercial center and social hub. Women from the community were among the first teachers in the area’s African American schools. Some Freetown children received primary and secondary education as boarding students at Selma University. The community’s population declined after World War II as African Americans migrated to northern and southern cities. Residents and their descendants over time became skilled workers, professionals, and active members of communities elsewhere, while maintaining strong ties to Freetown.