Preserving the Garden Cafeteria and Some Other History

Another lively discussion and a call to action was had last Friday morning at the Friday Morning Group (FMG). It all started out innocently enough. Patrice Pucci reported on attending the WEDU Be More Awards seminar the previous week. We had previously discussed the WEDU Be More Awards for non profit groups and the seminar was held to educate the non profit groups on how to apply for the awards.

Tom Taggart reminded us that WEDU would be 50 years on the air in October 2008. In connection with that, Patrice Pucci had used the Friday Morning Group Mail List with an interesting request. It turns out that WEDU originally was housed at what is now known as the Gibbs Campus of St. Petersburg College. Patrice had put a request out on the mail list for any information or documentation of that fact that anyone may know of. She was looking for this information for the St. Petersburg History Museum. Of course her request sparked several replies which were all shared with the FMG via the list.

Shirley Linde also got in on the act by using the list to ask the FMG if anyone knew of an alternative publisher she might approach for publishing her book. This also sparked several replies shared with the FMG via the mail list.

Tony Collins then remarked on the online social phenomena of mail lists and the interests sparked by seemingly simple requests. Tony remarked about these two requests being invitations to our community to respond via a new, social interactive media. in this case, the mail list.

The conversation then turned to a photographic assignment that was being offered to Herb Snitzer. The Garden Cafeteria / Piano Exchange building is slated for demolition and redevelopment. This building located in the 200 block of 2nd Street North is currently the studio of a metal working artist. It had also formerly been the home of a piano sales business. But the building had started out in life as the Garden Cafeteria.

The Garden Cafeteria was one of many cafeterias in St. Petersburg in the days of the green benches. The only remaining example of this type of business still in use is the Tramor building, which is used as the St. Petersburg Times cafeteria. In the heyday of the green bench era, cafeterias were one of the major parts of the tourism trade in St. Petersburg. Many, many such enterprises were located in and around the down town area catering to our winter visitors.

To differentiate themselves, many of these cafeterias used interior decorating to lure customers. If you have not seen the interior of the Tramor on 4th Street South, you should definitely check it out. (Little know fact - it is open to the public). The Garden, as its name implies, used a garden decorating motif. This included interior streams and bridges and potted plants all over the place. To top off this motif, the Garden employed muralist Scott Hill to paint murals on the walls and other murals to be mounted on the walls. Scott Hill was a well known Depression Era muralist. One of his murals has been preserved and is on display at Tampa International Airport. Hill in this case apparently picked up some commercial work. The crowning piece is a full wall mural painted directly onto the back wall of the Garden Cafeteria.

As the years have gone by, the Garden Cafeteria / Piano Exchange Building has deteriorated. Along with it, many of Hill's murals have deteriorated as well. The building has been acquired by a developer, who plans to demolish the building and redevelop the block. it's location across the street from Bay Walk makes it a prime candidate for such redevelopment.

When the developer filed his site plan for redevelopment of the property with the City, St. Pete Preservation became interested in saving the murals. They entered into talks with the City and the developer about saving the Scott Hill murals. The developer was not adverse to this, but everyone knew the full wall mural was going to be a problem. The developer hired an appraiser, another Florida muralist who was very familiar with Hill's work.The appraiser noted the deterioration of many of the pieces that had been painted on the mounted wall boards, but which could be removed and preserved relatively easily. He also noted that some of the work was probably not Hill's at all, but some other unknown artist's. However, much of the work was undoubtedly Hill's.

The full back wall mural turns out to in fact have been painted directly onto the wall. In approving the site plan, the developer and the city agreed that any murals that could be, would be removed and preserved. Prior to any demolition of the building, the remaining murals were to be photographically documented. This is the commission that was offered to Herb.

This is a rather long winded description of the situation to this point. But at the last meeting of the Friday Morning Group, a really interesting thing happened. It was suggested that while photo documenting the building was a good idea, a better idea would be to actually preserve the entire wall mural. This is a huge mural, encompassing the entire back wall of the building. The consensus of the group was that the effort should be made and that a way would be found to accomplish this.

So, anybody got a home for a wall with a beautiful mural on it?

(W)EDUcational Discussion

We had a pretty good crowd last Friday morning to hear Joyce Cotton, the Director of Marketing and Community Partnerships at WEDU. Joyce has been in television for 31 years (really Joyce, you can't be that old) and at WEDU for six years. She had a lot to share with us about activities at WEDU that are largely unknown to a lot of people, myself included.

As we were doing our customary self introductions, Bill Moriarity apprised us of the sad news that Artists Gallery Royale is closing at the end of this month. Bill, you were not the captain of the Titanic. Honest.

We got through the rest of the introductions without any other really sad news. Joyce told us about several programs that she is engaged in on behalf of WEDU, but I am going to cover a couple of the highlights. I encourage you to visit the WEDU web site at WEDU.ORG .

The Ready to Learn Program is an extension of WEDU's children's programming. The station works with Head Start programs, schools, Girl Scouts or whoever might be interested in participating in special events with WEDU. One of the most successful of these is Angelina's Ballerina held at Ruth Eckerd Hall during the holiday season. This event typically sells out with over 300 children participating.

There are also the WEDU Be More Awards. This is a program where WEDU partners with non profit organizations to honor particularly noteworthy non profits. Last year WEDU sent out 700 nomination invitations, receiving 82 back. There was a luncheon judging event to select the winners. WEDU will be hosting their Be More Awards Workshop at their studios on September 19. Check it out on the WEDU web site.

We also discussed WEDU's local programming. Tom and Joyce provided us with DVDs of The Gulf Coast Journal which will be entering its fifth season this year. This is a program produced by WEDU featuring former NBC newsman Jack Perkins and Sarasota County. You can watch it on the WEDU web site here. It would be tremendous if we could secure funding for a similar program for Pinellas or the Tampa Bay area.

I want to close by reminding everyone that Herb Snitzer will be giving his "formal" talk on his work at the Museum of Fine Arts this Sunday, August 12th at 3:00 PM. I hope to see you all on both Friday morning and on Sunday afternoon.

Sociology of Art

I guess you are getting somewhere when a social scientist is interested enough in what you are doing to want to study you. We were joined last Friday morning by a sociologist from Eckerd College who also happens to be a potter. Unfortunately for him, he joined us about half way through, so here's what he missed.

We started off talking about the Music of the Harlem Renaissance show at The Studio@620 the previous night. All who attended gave it rave reviews. Thanks to sponsorships from the Florida Humanities Council, The Studio@620 and the Al Downing / Tampa Bay Jazz Association, the event was free to the public. Way to go guys!

Herb Snitzer informed us that seven of his photographs have been hung in the Mayors outer office in City Hall. Also, Herb's show went up Friday at the Museum of Fine Art. Herb gave an informal talk Saturday afternoon on his fifty years in photography. Interestingly enough, he gave it to about 50 people.

We again talked about the idea of getting community art programming on WEDU. We kept coming back to the funding stumbling block. It costs about $250,000 to produce 12 1/2 hour episodes. Maybe the Pinellas Convention and Visitors Bureau would have an interest in underwriting something like that?

And speaking of money, we got a report from the St. Pete City Council. It seems the City Council has not yet decided how to allocate the $500 thousand that it has put back in the budget for arts and social service agencies. One proposal floated by a Council Member is to give all $500 thousand to the homeless. That would be none to the arts and none to any other social service agency. Stay tuned on this one.

See y'all on Friday.

Whole Lot of Art Going On

Last Firday morning there was a lot of information sharing going on. That's because there is a a whole lot of art going on in our area now and in the coming months.

The first item to report is that Herb Snitzer's show at the Museum of Fine Art is set to open July 20th. The show will run to September 11th. Herb will be giving an informal talk on July 21st and a gallery talk on August 12th. There will also be a dinner in Herb's honor in September. Stay tuned for more details.

Patrice Pucci reported that the City Players will be performing Hello Dolly at Ruth Eckerd Hall on July 20-21. All the players are volunteers. Through a deal with the City of Clearwater, the City Players get free use of Ruth Eckerd Hall. The net proceeds from the show go back to supporting City Players.

Tom Taggart reported that as of this past Tuesday, WEDU is broadcasting its entire program stream in Spanish. Part of this comes from PBS and part has to be locally produced. This brings the number of channels broadcast by WEDU to 5.

And our old and dear friend Dave Ellis stopped by. Dave is co artistic director of the Studio@620. Dave told us about an exciting program he is working on for a mid November to mid December run. The show is titled The Water is Wide - the Art of Boat Building. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

And we are looking forward to seeing you this Friday.

Smart TV and Looking for Writers

We were joined last Friday morning, by Tom Taggart, Director of Planned giving for Florida West Coast Public Broadcasting, Inc., more commonly known as our own community PBS station, WEDU Channel 3. Tom engaged with us in a very stimulating conversation about the possibilities for community produced programming for WEDU, particularly focusing on art education.

Tom reminded us of the Gulf Coast Journal program that is produced at WEDU featuring Sarasota County. This is an extremely well done and well received program. It was funded by a grant from Sarasota county interests and features retired NBC News reporter Jack Perkins as the on air face of the program.

Tom told us that WEDU is always interested in producing more community based content, but the funding challenge is one that must be met at WEDU as it is anywhere else. Twelve programs typically cost $250,000. The funder usually gets about $50,000 worth of on air in kind promotion making the net cost to the funder $200,000. However, the value of a well produced program is inestimable.

We discussed the possibility of looking at the Pinellas Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) as a potential funder for a community produced art education program featuring our community based artists. We are still looking to bring the new CVB director to a Friday Morning Group Meeting soon.

Herb Snitzer brought 3 books with him to our meeting last week. All three of these books were written by authors living in our community, including the newly published book on Mickey Mantle by Peter Golenback. Herb brought these books to illustrate that we have successful authors living in our community, but we do not seem to be attracting them to our Friday Morning Group.

This points up something I have been remarking about lately. That is that we all could be better ambassadors for the Friday Morning group. I would encourage all of you to reach out to any creative thinker that you encounter and extend them an invitation to join us at the Friday Morning Group.

Speaking of creative thinkers, we also discussed a new group that has formed in St. Pete. The St. Pete Creative Network had its first meeting recently. It seems to be heavily weighted towards graphic artists, which we also do not seem to be attracting to our Friday Morning Group meetings.

This Saturday at 4 PM a portrait of St. Pete native, Governor Charlie Crist will be unveiled at the St. Pete History Museum on the Pier approach. No mention has been made of the artist in the newspaper coverage of this upcoming event. Imagine that. However, it should be an interesting crowd. I am looking forward to seeing the portrait and meeting the artist.

And with that, I am going to just repeat that I am going to increase my efforts to be a better ambassador for the Friday Morning Group. How about you?