Lindsay Spencer and Matt Brown
Published: October 12, 2005
Quick quiz: If you were asked to meet at the Baars Building on the PJC Pensacola campus, would you know what building that was? If you said it was building 1, you would know exactly where to go.
Most of the buildings on campus have names written alongside those numbers. But who are the people the buildings are named after? Let’s take a tour around the Pensacola campus and look at the history behind these buildings.
Let’s start at the Baars Building. PJC acquired land on 9th Avenue from Theo Baars, part owner of the Baars Estate. Baars’ father was Henry G. S. Baars, who was a well known real estate agent in the late 1800s. At one time, the Baars family was said to have at least 12,000 acres in the Pensacola area alone.
Next to the Baars Building is the Barfield Administration Building, building 7. When PJC was first established, Jesse T. Barfield became the first dean of the new college. He contributed to PJC’s legacy by writing part of the first college catalog that was later presented to the state department.
Right next door is building 8, the Ashmore Fine Arts Center. PJC built and dedicated this building to Dr. Henry L. Ashmore in 1974. Dr. Ashmore was the first president of the college, and in 1954, he approved PJC’s move from the old Pensacola High School to its current location on 9th Avenue.
Behind the Ashmore is the Allen Liberal Arts building, better known to students as building 4. This building was named after James H. Allen, who was the president of the Florida Pulp and Paper Company. Allen paid the rent for the boarding house where PJC first conducted class in September of 1948.
On the corner of 9th Avenue and Underwood Avenue is building 2, the registration center and the Hagler Auditorium. Clyde H. Hagler was the vice-president for business affairs at PJC, and also was chairman for the accounting manual committee. According to the committee, “Hagler was a public servant and a good friend who provided expertise, knowledge, and positive results without the need to be recognized for his accomplishments.”
We continue our tour, moving east of the Baars Building to building 3, the Ross Health and Sports Center. Louis A. Ross was a social science instructor at PJC who saw a need for student activities. Ross put together the first basketball team in 1949 and later established and coached the first baseball team in 1951.
Building 23 is actually named in honor of three people. The Jack Kugelman Center for Telecommunications was established in 1994 and is now the home for WSRE-TV. The newest addition to the building was the Jean and Paul Amos Performance Studio which was added in March 2005. The Kugelmans and the Amos’s wanted to see WSRE excel, so the studio was able to purchase the latest equipment in digital technology with their contributions.
“Jean and Paul Amos hold a special place in our hearts. They are tremendous champions for WSRE and truly believe in our mission to encourage people to engage more deeply in the world around them by providing programming and outreach services that educate, inform, and entertain,” said WSRE’s general manager, Sandy Cesaretti Ray, in the February 2005 edition of PJC’s Green and White.
Continuing west down College Boulevard, we notice the Menge Bell Tower. This tower was built in December 1997 and is a symbol of PJC, marking 50 years of educational excellence and community service. M.J. Menge was a 1956 graduate, recognized for being a devoted leader in the community, enhancing high education opportunity, and contributing to different community projects.
Facing Airport Boulevard are buildings 21 and 17, which are named after James H. Baroco, president of the Baroco Foundation. In October of 1990, the Baroco Center for Science and Advanced Technology was added to the PJC Campus. Baroco not only contributed to PJC, but he also donated land to the University of West Florida so it could expand its campus.
Our last building is on the corner of 9th Avenue and Airport Boulevard, building 15, the Anna Lamar Switzer Visual Arts Building. The Switzer family and the O’Reilly family donated a total of $1 million so that PJC could provide a better facility and scholarships to their art students.
“This gift will make an enormous difference in what the college can provide to students of the visual arts as well as to the community at large. We are grateful to have someone with the generosity of vision to help us in fulfilling ours,” Allan Peterson, chair of visual arts department and director of the Visual Arts Gallery at PJC, said in a December 1998 article in the Green and White.
Knowing the names of the buildings can be helpful especially since the buildings were numbered in the order they were built, not the order in which they appear on campus.
The memory lives on for at PJC for the extraordinary people who contributed time, expertise, and financial assistance to create the buildings we see every day on campus.
