Gottscho's Florida pools

The Fontainebleau stairs, March 30, 1955

Fontainebleau Stairs is Library of Congress item 2018727437, Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, call number LC-G613-67025. The reproduction on the piece is an interpositive, LC-G613-T-67025. The record says Gottscho-Schleisner, March 30, 1955, the stairs at the Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach. Morris Lapidus is named as architect and as client. The subject heading is hotels. The title comes from the negative sleeve. No known restrictions on publication. The rights note points to the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection statement.

Two other Fontainebleau frames from that March, the pool and the tower, already have their own story. This one is the stairs. The sleeve is the title. Lapidus is the name on the job, twice.

Port Royal, November 13, 1959

Port Royal Beach Club, Naples, is Library of Congress item 2018731213, reproduction LC-DIG-gsc-5a27143, call number LC-G613-74823. The piece says November 13, 1959, from the pool toward the club. John L. Volk was the architect. The client on the record is John Glen Sample. The subjects are clubs and sports and recreation facilities. The title comes from the negative sleeve. No known restrictions on publication.

A club photograph is a commission. The names that matter are the ones on the sleeve and the job: Volk, Sample, the date, the view from the pool toward the building. The water is the foreground because that is where they stood the camera.

Hobe Sound, March 1960

Hobe Sound Pool House is Library of Congress item 2018731484, reproduction LC-DIG-gsc-5a27376, call number LC-G613-75338. The piece says March 1960, the John B. Ford residence in Hobe Sound, Florida, from the pool house across the pool. John L. Volk was the architect again. The subject heading is dwellings, not clubs. The title comes from the negative sleeve. No known restrictions on publication.

Volk's name on both the Naples club and the Hobe Sound house is the thread. Gottscho-Schleisner were the photographers architects hired when a building needed a record. Three pools, three sleeves, one collection. The Library does not endorse the shop.

The call numbers sit close together in the Gottscho-Schleisner sequence: LC-G613-67025 for the stairs, LC-G613-74823 for Port Royal, LC-G613-75338 for Hobe Sound. The dates are not close: March 30, 1955, then November 13, 1959, then March 1960. The stairs file is an interpositive. The other two are ordinary digital reproductions from the collection, LC-DIG-gsc-5a27143 and LC-DIG-gsc-5a27376. The difference is in the Library's copy, not in the buildings.

Each title, the pieces say, comes from the negative sleeve. That is a better caption than a nickname. Stairs. From the pool toward the club. From the pool house across the pool. Lapidus is architect and client on the hotel. Volk is the architect on the club and the house. Sample is the client in Naples. Ford is the resident in Hobe Sound. Those names are the whole guest list the records provide.

The subject headings change with the job. Hotels for the Fontainebleau. Clubs, sports, and recreation facilities for Port Royal. Dwellings for the Ford house. Gottscho-Schleisner did not file all three as pools, even though water is in every frame. The Library's heading is the better label, and it is already on the pieces. No known restrictions on publication, with the collection statement at the Library, covers all three. March 30, November 13, and a March five years later are far enough apart to hang as three separate jobs, not as one Florida trip. The sleeves already say which job was which, and the call numbers sit in the Gottscho-Schleisner run.