About the Pensacola Historical Society
The Pensacola Historical Society was organized on February 14, 1933, when twenty-one members met at City Hall; its charter and by-laws were ratified at the San Carlos Hotel two weeks later and the society was incorporated as a nonprofit educational organization on March 25 of that year. In 1938 it opened a museum in the Dorothy Walton House at 137 West Romana Street, a building purchased and donated for the purpose by collector T. T. Wentworth Jr. Visitors and volunteers dwindled during the Second World War, the museum closed in May 1944, and the society itself went dormant.
Reorganized in 1952, the society found a new home when the city allowed it to use Old Christ Church after the public library moved out; a museum opened there on August 15, 1960. Longtime director Leila Abercrombie was among the members who drove that revival. By 1991 the society had outgrown the church and moved its resource library to the Beacon Building on Church Street and its museum to the Arbona Building at 115 East Zaragoza Street, the address most people still associate with it.
The society no longer exists as a separate organization. According to the University of West Florida Historic Trust, the Pensacola Historical Society merged with West Florida Historic Preservation, Inc. in 2009, and its staff and assets became part of that body, which was renamed the UWF Historic Trust in 2013. (The local encyclopedia Pensapedia dates the society's dissolution to 2008.) The Trust traces its own roots to the Pensacola Historic Preservation and Restoration Commission created by the Florida legislature in 1967, and today it operates the Pensacola Museum of History, the Museums of Commerce and Industry, Old Christ Church and the historic houses of Historic Pensacola Village within the footprints of the colonial Spanish and British forts downtown.
Collections and Research Services
Researchers looking for the society's former holdings should go to the Trust's Hilton-Green Research Room at 117 East Government Street, open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. by appointment. The archives hold more than 100,000 images of street scenes, buildings, ships, fortifications and portraits; Pensacola city directories back to 1885; telephone books; cemetery records; Spanish land grant records; newspaper clipping files; microfilm of early newspapers and bound copies of the Pensacola Gazette from 1834 to 1854; census records; and Sanborn fire insurance maps. The Lelia Abercrombie Historical Reference Library, named for the society's longtime director, keeps out-of-print books on Northwest Florida. An in-person research fee doubles as admission to Historic Pensacola, with extra charges for copies, scans and emailed requests; appointments are arranged through HParchives@uwf.edu or (850) 595-5985 ext. 125. City directories and Sanborn maps are exactly what you need for a house history, as our guides to dating your house and using old city directories explain.
Planning Your Visit
The Trust's museums are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the Pensacola Museum of History, the Children's Museum and the Museum of Art also open Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. One ticket covers every museum for seven days and includes guided house tours of the Lavalle House, Old Christ Church, Dorr House and Lear/Rocheblave House at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; adult admission was $12 at the time of writing, with free entry for members, UWF students and SNAP cardholders. Check historicpensacola.org for closures during downtown festivals. Elsewhere in the Panhandle, the Historical Society of Bay County in Panama City covers the region's Gulf Coast history.
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