After almost 7 weeks in Connecticut, with a quick side-trip to NJ, we have now arrived in Florida.  Sorry for the lack of blog posts – it’s been a crazy couple of months as we spent most of our time sorting through all of our “worldly possessions”, whittling them down to a more manageable size. We were slowed down both by delays in the shipment of our stuff from Germany (it arrived more than 3 weeks late),  as well as by my allergies which, after being under control in Europe, celebrated our return to the U.S. by coming back in full-force. Ugh.

Ah well. Fingers crossed and thumbs pressed (as they say in Germany) we are now back on track. We’re down here in Melbourne  to visit more relatives that we haven’t seen in a few years. However, one additional goal I had this time was to find a building in town that was photographed in the 1950s by one of my favorite female American photographers, Berenice Abbott:

Berenice Abbott: Melbourne Hotel, U.S. Highway 1, 1954 (photo from Getty Archives)

The photo was taken for a project she did taking pictures up and down the length of U.S. Highway 1. Her idea had been to publish a book on the changing face of America through photographs of towns along that highway, but she was never able to interest a publisher in the work, so most of it has never been published.

But that photograph has, and Chris  discovered a while back that the building – but not the hotel – still exists in Melbourne, even though it has been extensively remodeled over the years. And as I said, one of my goals was to find and photograph it while we were here.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the vacation apartment I had randomly picked to rent for us here in Melbourne is actually across the street from that building:

Office building, formerly the Melbourne Hotel, 2015

How’s that for coincidence?  That’s got to be a good sign.  I hope to have lots of opportunities to get a better shot of the building over the next few weeks.