Postwar Florida Baseball, Horse Racing, and Coastal sunbelt Life Feature Works by Local Photographer George Fulmer, Archive of 43 Photographs and Large Format Negatives, 1951

Sunbelt Expansion George Fulmer

Photograph

Clearwater, Florida's rapid Sunbelt expansion shown through event and special assignment photography by George Fulmer. Post-war cultural shifts and community investment is shown in shots of baseball under lights, racetrack presentations, oil fouling the beach, retail product displays, and private feature photographs. George L. Fulmer Sr. served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a Pacific aerial photographer, and his wife Dolly worked with him in Fulmer Photo Service. The Clearwater Historical Society now stores tens of thousands of numbered negatives from his estate, placing these studio packets within a broader civic record of local families, businesses, beaches, sports, and public events.


Photo archive of 43 items including 21 silver gelatin photographs and 22 large format negatives measuring 5 x 4 inch, with prints averaging 5 x 3.5 inches, Clearwater and the Tampa Bay area, May 1951 and circa 1950s. Many prints have correlating negatives while some negatives contain unique images. Contained in six original studio envelopes which identify "Bombers Hunter," dated May 1951; "oil on beach"; "Tampa vs St Pete"; "Stone Malcolm N. 1374 Pinbrick Dr."; and an Eckerd Drug Co. packet with a Paul Harris note requesting pictures of glasses with reflections to show their fronts. Many negatives original snapshots while most duplicate the gelatin photographs. Baseball scenes include uniformed men at a fenced night field, a Bombers runner rounding a base under floodlights, a player pointing toward the infield, teammates walking off near spectators, and men steadying a figure beside fencing where one uniform back reads "Sporting Good." Racetrack views show a jockey in silks receiving a presentation object from a well dressed woman and a bow tied man, standing with a pale horse at the rail, and riding near a tote board, finish markers, and a large American flag. The beach oil assignment records dark mats and streaks at the surf line, a woman scraping or sampling material from wet sand, a bridge or pier over shallow water, and a black globular mass tangled with seaweed and beach debris. Specialty work includes aviator sunglasses on draped fabric with circular lens reflections; an older couple seated before shelves of cut glass, bowls, decanters, and small trophies at the Malcolm N. Stone address; a decorative bouquet print; and an "An Hieroglyphic Epistle" panel. The baseball work is especially notable as wartime and immediate postwar Americans treated the game as public morale and community life. Fulmer brings that national appetite down to Tampa Bay local play: Tampa versus St. Pete, a Bombers assignment dated May 1951, uniforms, floodlights, crowd fencing, and players moving through the dust of a Florida ballfield. Another shows "Captain Deck[s] +Boat" and depicts five men docking a row boat, and another image of a likely grandfather and grandaughter posing as the man wears a souvenir style tee-shirt reading "New Port Richey Florida."

Postwar Sunbelt expansion provided Fulmer with the clientele, events, leisure culture, and commercial traffic giving him his range of work. Florida’s wartime buildout of bases, roads, and airports left a transportation network ready for postwar residents and visitors; migration then pushed the state beyond older economic anchors of tourism, citrus, cattle, and phosphate. The population of Pinnelas County more than doubled between 1940 and 1960; road improvements started in the late 40s continued into the 1950s; the Chamber of Commerce promoted "Sparkling Clearwater and its Sparkling Beaches"; and tourists began arriving in summer as well as winter. The oil packet adds the environmental underside of beach development, since tar balls are weathered oil mixed with debris and new deposits can indicate a spill requiring hand removal or beach cleaning machinery. Studio envelopes show creasing and handling wear; prints show light curling, scattered surface wear, and minor edge wear; negatives show handling wear, corner notches, and slight discoloration. Overall in good to very good condition. Fulmer’s authorship, early 1950s sports content, and commercial beach assignments preserve how local sport, tourism, retail promotion, industrial impact, and private commemoration was documented in Clearwater.

Item #23368

Price: $625.00