Plant City History & Photo Archives set to celebrate its silver anniversary.
The History & Photo Archives is holding a Gala on October 4 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The event will be held at the 1922 Lee Building on the northwest corner of E. Reynolds St. and Palmer St. The anniversary bash will also mark the grand opening of a historic camera and photo collage exhibit in the Lee Building. The History & Photo Archives has reached out to people at the Lakeland History & Culture Center, the Tampa Bay History Center, and some former history professors in the area to join in. “I am trying to make it more of a party than a membership gaggle,” Ed Verner, founder of the History & Photo Archives and owner of City Properties Company, Inc., said.
“When it first came time to buy Bill Friend’s pictures in 2000, I was the president of the East Hillsborough Historical Society (EHHS),” Verner said. “I created the Archives, but originally my thought was, ‘The Archives is going to focus only on photos, and EHHS would do everything else; strawberry queen gowns, artifacts, and all kinds of stuff.’ If I was telling the truth about how in the world we wound up with these cameras, and the Gladys Jeffcoat pictures and cameras and how they are here on display in the Lee Building, it has been 17 years in the making. I originally bought the Jeffcoat photos in 2008. We didn’t really get the cameras on display properly for a long time. They stayed at the old high school for awhile, but then Gladys died in 2012. I had it in my head I was going to build the cabinets you see now, but then Covid hit, so, nothing burger.”
While the idea of continuing to digitize and organize the Jeffcoat photographs continued on sporadically in the Mann Building Jeffcoat Annex, the camera exhibit needed a new home, preferably one with some public daily foot traffic. “With over 300 framed historic pictures from Gladys and fellow same-era Plant City photographer Bill Friend already adorning much of the public hallways in the Lee Building, both upstairs and downstairs, perhaps that was a place for the cameras,” Verner said. David Verner researched and organized them, and Jack Moore and Brendan Tilley accomplished the construction of custom mahogany glass cases in 2022 to house what would remain on permanent display. In the Fall of 2024, Amelia Bitting, with the assistance of her father and researchers at the History & Photo Archives, began work on a photo collage to accompany the camera display cases. Featuring the work of Jeffcoat and Friend, the Lee Building also houses this exhibit.
The History & Photo Archives is an award-winning historical photo archive located in Downtown Plant City. In 2000, the organization was born from the acquisition of a collection of photographs from the estate of Friend, a renowned photographer in the area. The Archives’ initial mission was to protect and preserve the historical images of Plant City. Since then, the organization’s goal evolved from only saving digital reproductions of photographs to exploring and understanding the historical significance behind each subject captured for posterity. The establishment of the Dr. Scotty & Hsiu Huang History Center in 2010 allowed The Archives to expand its scope beyond photos. The center is the institution’s onsite research library. It offers books on a broad range of historical topics.
The History & Photo Archives holds a collection of over 100,000 local historical photographs, negatives, and documents that are available for the public to view at no cost. Inside the gallery, visitors can see slideshows of digital photo reproductions on large display screens or browse through the archives. The exhibits include things like a salute to veterans, and the Strawberry Festival. Staff is available to answer questions. The History & Photo Archives is open Tuesday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The exhibit in the Lee Building is available to the public free, Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Members of The Archives can attend the celebration for free. Non-member tickets are $25. To register for the event, call The Archives at 813-754-1578. Tickets can also be purchased online using the QR code. If doing so, please remember to enter contact information such as name, email address, phone, etc.
