The organization of the hospital began with the efforts of the local chapter of the Daughters of Charity, a religious order formed in 1633 in France, whose purpose is care for the sick and needy. After obtaining $400,000 as an investment for the purpose of opening a permanent hospital in Pensacola, the Daughters of Charity were able to secure the services of Austrian-born architect, A.O. Van Herbulis. Herbulis used a combination of Tudor and English Goth architecture for the hospital. Opening in 1915, residents in and around Pensacola now had a hospital to receive care. Before they had to travel to New Orleans for serious cases. It was simply known as the Pensacola Hospital.&nbsp; For 50 years, this building allowed patients to receive numerous types of treatments, including: surgical, therapeutic, bacterial and radiological. A third wing was added to provide care for area Creoles and African Americans. In 1948, Mother Margaret O'Keefe had the hospital renamed the Sacred Heart Hospital of Pensacola. In 1965 the hospital moved to a new building on 9th Ave and continues to serve the city. Left abandoned for 4 years, the city turned the building into a private school for Liberal Arts, which ran until 1978, being forced to close because of the lack of maintenance care. 1980, East Tower Group Inc. purchased the building and soon began to renovate and modernize the building. Today the building holds several restaurants, a local theater company, and many private offices. Visitors can tour the public spaces from 8 a.m. to 5 a.m., Monday through Friday.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Sisters of the Daughters of Charity sit outside the hospital, circa 1920s. 

Hospital under construction in either 1914 or 1915

Sisters of the Daughters of Charity in 1940s

17th or 19th century painting of the Daughters of Charity in action

Sisters on top of an empty lot on 9th Ave. in 1959 as they look for the hospital's new location

Entranceway of hospital, circa late 1910s. 

Hospital in 1915 with working being done inside

Film North Florida-Contains various photos of the hospital building, inside and out, as it looks today. 

More Info

Website

Also known as the Old Sacred Heart Hospital, this 1915 hospital is Florida's first, and oldest, Catholic hospital. This building was used for 50 years before the hospital moved to 9th Ave. This hospital was also known for adding a third wing so that local Creoles and African Americans could also receive treatment. Since 1965 the building was used a school and currently is being used  for offices as it gets renovated to its original state. 

Pensacola Hospital

Legend has it that the concept of the building was created from a competition between Walter Chrysler, creator of the Chrysler Building, and John Jakob Raskob from General Motors to see who could create the taller building between the two. After seeing that Chrysler had already created a tall building in Midtown Manhattan, Raskob put together a team of investors, including former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, and chose the architecture company Shreve, Lamb and Harmon to design the building. The team purchased a parcel of land at 350 Fifth Avenue, the spot of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and demolished the hotel and began construction of the building that would soon define a city.&nbsp;The original designs called for it to be a flat-topped building but later announced that a 200-foot mooring mast would be added. On March 17, 1930, construction began on the structure by erecting 210 steel columnns, with twelve of them running the entire building height. A tight work schedule was put in place by construction firm Starrett Bros. &amp; Eken with the belief that "the sooner the building opened, the sooner the owners could start making money by collecting rent from tenants." Construction supposedly went so fast that the building rose at a rate of four and a half floors per week. On May 1, 1931, after over a year of construction, the Empire State Building officially opened its doors, giving New Yorkers a new sense of pride in the midst of the Great Depression.The building itself has garnered much fame since its opening. The beginning of its long-running fame began after part of the 1933 film King Kong was set outside the building, as the gigantic gorilla ascended the structure with the film's heroine before being shot down by planes with machine guns. Planes would later put the structure to the test when a B-25 Bomber crashed into the building on July 28, 1945, killing fourteen people and leaving an eighteen-foot-wide tear in the façade of the building.&nbsp;The&nbsp;Empire State Building lost its title of world's tallest building in 1972 when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were completed.&nbsp; &nbsp;

On May 1, 1939, a button was pressed in Washington, D.C. by President Herbert Hoover that turned on the lights to the world's tallest building at the time. The Empire State building, though now the fifth tallest building in the United States and the thirty-fourth tallest in the world, is still one of the most well-known structures in New York City. Standing at 102 stories tall, it's impossible to not find this gargantuan structure located on 5th Avenue. Visitors can view the Big Apple from the famous Observation Deck on the 86th floor. 

Empire State Building

Stanford
University was founded in 1885 as a memorial to Leland Stanford Jr., son of
Jane and Leland Sr., who died the previous year at the age of 15.&nbsp; The Stanford’s donated approximately $40
million to the university and, when Leland Sr. died in 1893, his wife sought to
create an appropriate memorial on the university’s campus for her late husband.&nbsp; The result was Stanford Memorial Church.&nbsp; Jane Stanford sought to “…secure the
religious needs of the university in a non-sectarian manner.”&nbsp; And while the cruciform design of and
religious symbolism within the church certainly focuses on Christianity, it was
and still is a non-denominational church.

Designs for the
church were drawn up by Charles Coolidge in 1898, ground was broken in 1899 and
the church was dedicated in 1903.&nbsp; The Stanfords
had previously traveled extensively throughout Europe and were greatly influenced
by the city of canals, Venice, Italy.&nbsp;&nbsp;
As a result, Jane requested that the church reflect those
influences.&nbsp; She contracted with Venetian
artists, Maurizio Camerino and Antonio Paoleti, to design the majestic mosaics
that grace both the church’s interior and exterior and employed J. &amp; R.
Lamb of New York City to create its numerous stained glass windows.&nbsp; 

Unfortunately,
the original church was almost completely destroyed by the Great San Francisco
Earthquake of 1906.&nbsp; Its 80-foot clock
tower fell in on the chancel roof destroying much within, most of its walls
cracked, and the front façade, with its beautiful mosaic, collapsed.&nbsp; Thankfully, Jane Stanford, who died in 1905,
did not witness the near destruction of the church.&nbsp; In 1908, reconstruction efforts began on the
church, with much of the original sandstone being reused as were the intact
stained-glass windows.&nbsp; The church’s
crossing was rebuilt with a more stable tiled hipped roof with a large oculus
to permit the infusion of natural light.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Camerino restored the mosaics and the church was fully restored by
1917.&nbsp; However, it was decided not to
replace the clock tower and the original clock now resides in the Stanford
Clock Tower.

The new
cruciform structure is 190 feet long and 150 feet wide with an arcade, narthex
entrance, nave with clerestory above, and a massive crossing with semicircular
Romanesque arches.&nbsp; The large exterior mosaic
by Paoletti was recreated and was the largest in the country at that time at 80
feet x 30 feet&nbsp; It contains 47 figures
and is a veneration of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount.&nbsp; The interior is decorated with more stunning
mosaics, paintings, statuary and massive chandeliers that were installed in
1915.&nbsp; Its 20 large stained-glass windows
took three years to create and 8 months to install and depict the life of
Christ, while the smaller windows feature Biblical figures such as Ruth,
Joshua, Abraham and Judith among many others.&nbsp;
The church survived the 1989 earthquake with only moderate damage and
was closed for structural repairs until 1992. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Located on the main quad of Stanford University, its Memorial Church was built at the bequest of Jane Stanford as a memorial to her late husband, Leland, in 1903.  Designed by Charles Coolidge, who was greatly influenced by Henry Hobson Richardson, the church is built in the Romanesque style with Venetian and Byzantine influences.  It was severely damaged in the 1906 earthquake and largely rebuilt afterward and damaged again during the 1989 earthquake.  It is perhaps best known for its large, numerous and decorative mosaics and stained-glass windows.  It is open to the public every day except Saturdays and offers guided tours every Friday.

Stanford Memorial Church

Born in Belgium in 1889, George Weydisch immigrated to the United States with his wife, Maria, in 1909. Before coming to Huntington, the Weydischs briefly lived in Fairmont, West Virginia, where George worked as a glass worker, and in South Charleston, where he worked for the U.S. Naval Ordnance Plant. Around 1926, the couple moved to Huntington, where they owned a joint restaurant and grocery at 529 Camden Road. After Maria Weydisch passed away in 1927, George married Ida Saber, a German immigrant who had come to the United States three years earlier. Around 1932, the Weydischs moved their French Grocery &amp; Meat Market to 226 Piedmont Road, where it was renamed the French Tavern. In 1936, the restaurant moved again to 2349 Adams Avenue. The small building had formerly housed the Cabell County detachment of the West Virginia State Police.Over the next four decades, the French Tavern became one of Huntington’s most popular restaurants, offering high-quality meals in an intimate setting. The French Tavern was a common location for dates, anniversaries, and other special occasions, and was a favorite among Huntingtonians who wanted to treat their out-of-town guests. The menu featured a variety of fine dishes, including hand-cut steaks, live lobster and other fresh seafood, homemade wheat bread, and impressive desserts like baked Alaska. The restaurant also offered European specialties like French onion soup, French-style fried eggplant, and a popular salad dressing made with roquefort cheese. While diners often saved the French Tavern for special occasions, the restaurant offered discounted blue plate specials every Sunday. After the Weydischs retired during the late 1950s, Ida’s son Henry Bode and his wife Frances took over the French Tavern. In 1974, they passed the restaurant on to their son George Bode and his wife Jenni, who moved the restaurant to a new location down the street at 1925 Adams Avenue. The new building, a former Kroger supermarket, was much larger than the French Tavern’s previous location. It featured a dining room with seating for two hundred customers, a 190-seat supper club, and banquet rooms for up to 250 diners. The supper club, which was called Frenchy’s, also offered live entertainment every night. While the new location greatly increased the French Tavern’s seating capacity, some customers felt that the move was a mistake, as it caused the restaurant to lose the intimate atmosphere that many guests had enjoyed.   After over fifty years in business, the French Tavern closed down in early 1980, and the Bodes moved to North Carolina. In 1983, the restaurant’s long-time building at 2349 Adams Avenue was demolished due to the deteriorating condition of the structure. Today, the site is home to a laundromat and a tobacco shop. Meanwhile, the French Tavern’s final location in the former supermarket is currently the site of Sew Many Blessings, a quilt shop, and Bloss &amp; Dillard Insurance Company.

For more than fifty years, the French Tavern was regarded as one of Huntington’s finest restaurants. Founded during the 1920s by Belgian immigrant George Weydisch, the eatery originated as a joint restaurant and grocery store on the city’s west side. It was renamed the French Tavern when the Weydischs moved it to Piedmont Road around 1932. In 1936, the restaurant moved again to 2349 Adams Avenue, where it remained for nearly four decades. With a menu offering hand-cut steaks, fresh seafood, and homemade bread, as well as blue plate specials each Sunday, the French Tavern soon grew into one of the city’s most popular eateries. After the Weydischs retired, the restaurant was operated by Ida Weydisch’s son, Henry Bode, and his wife Frances. In 1974, it was passed to their son George Bode and his wife, who moved it to a former supermarket at Adams Avenue and West Nineteenth Street. The new location featured a large dining room as well as a supper club, along with private banquet rooms. After over fifty years in business, the French Tavern closed in 1980.  

Test Tour

Pensacola Hospital

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information