Established | 1988 |
---|---|
Location | Pensacola, Florida |
Coordinates | 30°24′32″N87°12′48″W / 30.408781°N 87.21344°W |
Type | History museum |
Website | www.historicpensacola.org |
The Pensacola Museum of History at the University of West Florida, formerly the T. T. Wentworth Jr. Florida State Museum, is a museum of history located at 330 Jefferson Street in the Plaza Ferdinand VII in Pensacola, Florida. It is part of the Historic Pensacola Village museum complex. The building, reminiscent of the Alamo mission style, was built in 1907 as the Pensacola City Hall and served as such until 1985 when the present city hall was built at 180 Governmental Center, also known as 222 West Main Street. In 1989, the building was listed as the Pensacola City Hall in A Guide to Florida's Historic Architecture, published by the University of Florida Press. [1]
Wentworth opened his first museum as a roadside stand in the suburb of Ensley in 1957, and continued to collect items of interest. His curiosity spanned a wide range of materials. In the 1980s, Wentworth said he would donate his entire collection to the city if it provided a permanent location in Pensacola. A state grant was signed by Governor Bob Martinez to enable the city to renovate the former city hall for this purpose, as the city had completed a new facility in 1985.
The museum was officially opened in 1988. One floor is dedicated to Wentworth's eccentric collections, which include a mummified cat. The other two floors illustrate and interpret life in the Florida Panhandle over the centuries; some of the artifacts are from Wentworth's collection. The other floors house a science interactive museum for children.
From September 2004 to March 2005, the museum was closed for renovations after Hurricane Ivan caused considerable damage to the property. When the museum opened again, a new exhibit was added, comparing and contrasting the effects of the 2004 hurricane to the 1926 hurricane that had damaged the building.
On July 14, 2020 the University of West Florida Historic Trust announced that it was looking into changing the museum's name in light of newly released documents showing that Wentworth was a leader of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. [2] On March 18, 2021, the University of West Florida Board of Trustees voted to change the name of the museum in a 5–4 decision. [3] The UWF Historic Trust board had previously voted in December 2020 to change the name of the museum to the Pensacola Museum of History at the University of West Florida. [4]
Pensacola is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, and the county seat and only incorporated city of Escambia County, Florida. Pensacola is the principal city of the Pensacola Metropolitan Area, which had an estimated 502,629 residents in 2019. At the 2020 United States census, the population was 54,312.
DeFuniak Springs is a city and the county seat of Walton County, Florida, United States. The population was 6,968 as of the 2020 Census. DeFuniak Springs also serves as a hub for many residents in surrounding communities. In 2019, MSN's Insider Online named the city as the "best small town in Florida".
The University of West Florida is a public university in Pensacola, Florida, United States. Established in 1963 as a member institution of the State University System of Florida, the University of West Florida is a comprehensive research university without faculties of law or medicine, a designated space-grant institution, and sits on the third largest campus in the State University System, at 1,600 acres (650 ha). The university's mascot is Argie the Argonaut and its logo is the chambered nautilus.
The Florida Panhandle is the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Florida. It is a salient roughly 200 miles long, bordered by Alabama on the north and the west, Georgia on the north, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Its eastern boundary is arbitrarily defined. It is defined by its southern culture and rural geography relative to the rest of Florida, as well as closer cultural links to French-influenced Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Its major communities include Pensacola, Navarre, Destin, Panama City Beach, and Tallahassee.
The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, previously known as Villa Vizcaya, is the former villa and estate of businessman James Deering, of the Deering McCormick-International Harvester fortune, on Biscayne Bay in the present-day Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami, Florida. The early 20th-century Vizcaya estate also includes extensive Italian Renaissance gardens, native woodland landscape, and a historic village outbuildings compound.
The Pui Tak Center, formerly known as the On Leong Merchants Association Building, is a building located in Chicago's Chinatown. Designed by architects Christian S. Michaelsen and Sigurd A. Rognstad, the building was built for the On Leong Merchants Association and opened in 1928. The Association used it as an immigrant assistance center, and the building was informally referred to as Chinatown's "city hall". In 1988, the FBI and Chicago Police raided the building as part of a racketeering investigation. The US federal government seized the building that same year.
The Tampa Museum of Art is located in downtown Tampa, Florida. It exhibits modern and contemporary art, as well as Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities. The museum was founded in 1979 and debuted an award-winning new building in 2010 just north of its original site along Tampa's Riverwalk on the banks of Hillsborough River.
The Pensacola Historic District is a U.S. historic district located in Pensacola, Florida.
The Saenger Theatre, also known as the Saenger Theater, is a historic theater in Pensacola, Florida. It is located at 118 South Palafox Place. On July 19, 1976, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Admiral Fetterman Field is a multi-use park in Pensacola, Florida that includes a stadium, commercial buildings, a waterfront public park and amphitheater. The mixed use stadium holds 5,038 people and can be used for a number of events year-round, including baseball, soccer, football, festivals, graduations, and similar events. The multi-use stadium was originally designed to be the home field of the Pensacola Pelicans; it hosts the Miami Marlins Double-A affiliate, the Pensacola Blue Wahoos of the Southern League. The stadium is situated facing the Pensacola Bay.
The Old Christ Church, also known as Christ Church, built in 1832 in Pensacola, Florida is a historic Episcopal church building. It is one of the oldest surviving church buildings in Florida. On May 3, 1974, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The history of Pensacola, Florida, begins long before the Spanish claimed founding of the modern city in 1698. The area around present-day Pensacola was inhabited by Native American peoples thousands of years before the historical era.
Old City Hall, also known as the Southern Market, is a historic complex of adjoining buildings in Mobile, Alabama, that currently houses the History Museum of Mobile. The complex was built from 1855 to 1857 to serve as a city hall and as a marketplace. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1973, as a rare well-preserved example of a 19th-century multifunction civic and commercial building.
Judith Ann Bense is an American academic, Florida historical archaeologist, and a former president of the University of West Florida. She is also the chairwoman of the Florida Historical Commission at the University of West Florida, she served as a faculty member and department chair in the anthropology program, which she started at the school. In 2008, she started her 7-year term as president of the university. Prior to this, she was the executive director of anthropology and archaeology at UWF. During her career, she was fundamental in drafting the legislation to create the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN).
The Pensacola Museum of Art is the only art museum in the city of Pensacola, Florida. It was founded in 1954 by a group of women from the American Association of University Women. Since 2016, it is a University of West Florida Art Museum.
The Masonic Temple of Citrus Lodge No. 118, F. and A.M. refers to a historic 3-story building designed by prominent Florida architect Wilbur B. Talley and built in 1910 at the corner of West Main Street and South Pine Avenue in Inverness, Citrus County, Florida. It is also known as Inverness Masonic Temple. As was common with American Masonic buildings of the time, the first floor was used for retail stores, while the second floor was used for professional offices and the third floor was used for the lodge hall and other Masonic uses. Over the years, the second floor also housed the city hall and a movie theater. After repairing the fire damage from a lightning strike in 1963, Citrus Lodge decided to build a new building at 301 Hendrix Avenue and vacated the premises in 1965. The building was then sold to a series of private owners. In 1990 the Board of County Commissioners rented the third floor for a few years. Recent uses include the building management office on the ground floor, bookkeepers, attorneys, insurance agents, therapists, tutor services and an AA Intergroup office on the other floors.
The Blount Building is an historic seven-story Chicago school style office building located at 3 West Garden St., SW corner of Palafox St., Pensacola, Escambia County, Florida. It was built by Charles Hill Turner in 1906-1907 for local attorney William Alexander Blount on the site of the three-story Blount-Watson Building, which had burned on Halloween night in 1905. The building features so-called Chicago windows and contains in its exterior the contain the three parts of a classical column, with the first and second floors being the base of the column, the third through sixth floors the shaft and the seventh floor the capital. The first floor exterior has been changed over the years reflect different retail needs, but the exterior of the upper floors remains intact.
The Heritage, formerly known as the Journal Record Building, Law Journal Record Building, Masonic Temple and the India Temple Shrine Building, is a Neoclassical building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It was completed in 1923 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. It was damaged in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It houses the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum in the western 1/3 of the building and The Heritage, a class A alternative office space, in the remaining portion of the building.
Julee Cottage is an historic home built in c. 1805 and located in the Historic Pensacola Village at 210 East Zaragoza Street in Pensacola, Florida, U.S.. The building serves as the home of the Black History Museum of West Florida.
Trader Jon's was a bar in Pensacola, Florida which operated from 1953 to 2003. It became famous for its owner, Martin "Trader Jon" Weissman's personal eccentricities, "Tradernomics", and large collection of military memorabilia.