Photographin' Around the Eau Gallie Arts District

pokemonprime

Back in November, I treated myself and purchased a "real digital camera"

A silver digital camera with a black lens, sitting on light blue sheets
say hello!

This is an Olympus E-PL3, a 12.3 megapixel micro-four-thirds camera from 2011, and I'm very happy with it. It's a great, compact little piece, and I've been taking it out and about whenever I want to do some "real photography" with a real lens.

It's photos will feature in a lot of future posts, but for now we'll start with a trip I took to the downtown Eau Gallie (otherwise marketed as the Eau Gallie Arts District/EGAD)

Eau Gallie is, legally speaking, a neighborhood on the north side of Melbourne, Florida, but it was a distinct, independent city until 1969, when the two cities merged and consolidated under the name of Melbourne. While it lost it's name (in a vote angry locals will still insist was rigged)[1], the late merger gave Eau Gallie enough time to develop fairly independently, and with Downtown Eau Gallie as an anchoring point, it's remained fairly distinct.  I think even if someone here doesn't know the history, they'll tell you "north Melbourne" has a different feel than the rest of it. 

A hyper-realistic mural of a fox with a long, swirling tail
A mural featuring a repeated pattern of a girl in a diagonal, diving position on a black background
A pastel mural featuring birds and flowers

Like any self-respecting artsy downtown, Eau Gallie has plenty of nice murals. The first is pretty, but also kinda my least favorite, given it's just advertising the business it's on the side of, a bar called The Salty Fox (602 Eau Gallie Blvd)[2], and on top of that this kinda hyper-real style does very little for me.The next, attached to the side of Funky Dog Improv (587 Eau Gallie Blvd), is more my style, done by artist Mando Marie, who's art features a lot of repeating images in this 50s-clipart inspired style. While I appreciate local artists, it always tickles me to see that an artist who has work in big cities and even abroad has come down here and done a mural, it's like "yes! someone else knows we exist!"[3]. The third, an uncredited piece on the side of a 2-story building at 1586-1588 Highland Ave, is also nice- I really love the flatly colored birds. I wish it wasn't adjoined by a parking lot, though. 

A scalloped red and white store facade, shot head on
A red and white sign with scalloped top and bottom edges, and a protruding middle. Eau Gallie is spelled in neon script text, with Ace Hardware on a simple plastic panel underneath
A closeup of one scalloped window, with Merry Christmas painted on the glass
a 3/4 shot of the same scalloped storefront

Eau Gallie Ace Hardware (590 W Eau Gallie Blvd) doesn't sound very exciting, but it's an absolute midcentury gem, built in 1967. I'll admit the dead-on front shot is a total ripoff of some of my favorite photographers like the Rural Indexing Project, but hey, it's a great look.  While I'm here talking photography, one of the best parts of picking up a camera with a real lens is it takes incredible sign photos, something that, at best, come out flatly lit with middling, over-sharpened resolution on a cell phone. I think the 2nd photo shows that pretty well. 

A orange brick bank building with white columns and trim
a small, one story brick building painted entirely white, with a center door and windows on either side

Continuing our theme of architecturally interesting buildings, we have the State Bank of Eau Gallie (1925) and the Old Post Office (ca.1890s). The State Bank of Eau Gallie (1437 Highland Ave) must have been a quite striking building for it's time, surrounded by wood-framed buildings of both less scale and lighter ornamentation, but it wasn't to last. Built at the height of the Florida land boom, it crashed right along with it, and the State Bank of Eau Gallie failed in 1928. This smaller white building is the Old Post Office (1596 Highland Ave), allegedly in use from ca. 1900 to 1925, with a build date ca. 1890s.[4] It's a cute little building, almost bank-like, but I wish it had a paint scheme other than flat white. 

A peach colored 2-story building
A closeup of the word Karrick in weathered white text
An overgrown outdoor ice freezer

This little 2-story building was built in 1924 as the Karrick Grocery (1490 Highland Ave), and while this original business closed in 1963, it's past is still visible in the "Karrick" name on the top of the building, and, more interestingly, a vintage external freezer, still proudly advertising Crushed Ice on the side of the building. (also there's a historical plaque but shhh)

A post-modern building entrance. Smooth yellow columns support a curved canopy in front of a entrance with a triangle peaked roof.
Another curved canopy, with blue accents supported by yellow columns on the building's corner
A head on shot showing a small canopy over two windows, as well as black tile-brick on the right side of the building

The Eau Gallie Civic Center (1551 Highland Ave) was built in 1994, and is in my opinion a greatly under-rated piece of post-modern architecture, especially for a smaller city. The yellow is looking a bit faded by now, but it's still a looker.

A head-on shot of a brick wall with a simple white cross in the upper left
A mid-century office building styled building

I've mentioned before that I consider church shots a little "cheap", but I still like this pair, two ends of the Calvary Chapel Eau Gallie's mid-century annex (1591 Highland Ave). It was built in 1956, seemingly as a St Pauls United Methodist Church, a denomination it kept until around 2018, when it became the Highland Avenue Fellowship Church. It's latest name seems to originate from this year. 

A ghost sign that barely reads Carrol's on a brick building
A ghost sign that barely reads Furniture on a brick building

Here we get an alright look at two halves of a ghost sign uncovered during renovations at 617 W Eau Gallie Blvd, which once read "Carroll's Fine Furniture"; the ghost sign was much more intact before, and I have photos I'll share someday, but I'm happy any of it survived.

A zoomed in shot of a small courtyard path slowly overgrown with plants
A puleld back shot of a fence blocking the same courtyard
A purple mural advertising a haunted house
A small brutalist canopy covering an overgrown courtyard

The Foosaner Art Museum (1463 Highland Ave), once a fairly critical part of the yknow, "Arts District", has sat vacant since the Florida Institute of Technology voted to close the unprofitable gallery in 2021, selling it to a developer who announced big plans for a luxury hotel tower in it's place. 3 years and two temporary uses as a mini-golf course and a haunted house later, the vacant property remains just a hole in the middle of downtown Eau Gallie. The first two photos are shots of a small courtyard that's been pretty aesthetically growing over with once cultivated plants; neither of these came out perfect, the focus is off in the first and the lighting off in the latter, but I'm still pretty content with them. Whether or not that colorful piece of pipe is a remnant of an art piece or just garbage is unknown to me, though all the museum's actual collection should have been moved to another museum in Ocala long ago.

"Screamland" was the second of the space's temporary uses, after a 50s-themed mini-golf attraction, and the advertising mural for it still hangs out on the corner. A small remnant of the googie-esque advertising mural for the minigolf can be seen poking out the bottom right corner of the Screamland mural too. The last shot is of a larger courtyard on the building's left side- quite a nice little feature, though a bit soiled by the tacky, art deco-font "NO TRESPASSING" sign thats been nailed to it since closure. 

Rx spelled out in white tile on a background of irregular sandstone bricks. Hanging antiques and a poster obscure it, as does furniture in the foreground
a 3/4 shot of a black and white painted two story house with a front porch
A mostly white enclosed food trailer with a banner hanging underneath the serving window advertising Cuban food
A sealed off door with overgrown plants obscuring most of it. Smaller pots rest on the former steps.

Mopping up: This heavily obscured ℞ symbol is a remnant of this furniture store's past as Goodyear's Pharmacy (568 W Eau Gallie Blvd). If the property appraiser can be trusted, this cute two-story at 1500 Highland Ave, now in use as a realty office, dates all the way back to 1887! A dinosaur by Florida standards. Happily, it's retained a decent amount of it's details over the years, primarily on the porch.

Like anywhere in suburban America these days, Brevard is beset by food trucks aplenty, though this trailer serving Cuban food is a bit simpler than most (though probably better tasting). Finally, this leafy shot is a sealed up door on the left side of 1598 Highland Ave, a brick cottage now in use as a church thrift store. 

Oh, also.

A weird looking statue of a tree stump with a face, on top of some kind of bollard or post

I found this.

The less I look at it the better I feel.

Until next time! And HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[1] The vote originally included options for a brand new city name, but they all lost to just calling the whole thing 'Melbourne'. 'Harbor City', one of the names, survives as Melbourne's slogan of "The Harbor City".
[2] I want to start adding addresses whenever I mention places- talking about something without an attached address has annoyed me for years, and I shouldn't perpetuate it
[3] For reasons other than idiotic and hateful political stunts
[4] The property appraiser claims it wasn't built until 1930, but the build date for older buildings is often inaccurate.

 

 

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