401 South Palafox
Pfeiffer family members, and there were many of them, loved to construct their buildings with cast iron. This building, now home to a men’s clothing store, was constructed around 1883, by John M. Pfeiffer. The beautiful architectural details on the building are made of cast iron. This building front is composed of cast iron columns, often called posts, and lintels. Post and lintel construction, or a system of vertical supports with a horizontal beam across the top, is an ancient building technique. Examples of this method would be the Parthenon and Stonehenge.
For a short period of time in the late 1800s and very early 1900s cast iron was one of the most popular building materials used to construct wide open store fronts along American main streets. Combined with advances in glass manufacturing that lowered the price of windows, slender iron columns created large space for store window displays. These new inventions coupled with improvements in transportation created a cascade effect of increased commerce across the nation.
Before the Civil War, most city’s constructed buildings with locally available resources. Importing material for buildings would have been very expensive. As an example of Industrial Revolution era progress, the components of this building were manufactured by Snead & Bibb Ironworks by railroad car to Pensacola all the way from Louisville, Kentucky.
John Pfeiffer operated a grocery store at the street level and rented the upstairs to the United States Signal Service. The Signal Service, a precursor to today’s national weather service, provided vital notifications to ships in the harbor by flying large flags of different colors to indicate weather conditions.
Perhaps to move farther away from Pensacola’s brothel district that was thriving just around the corner, the Pfeiffers relocated to larger quarters on East Government Street after about ten years. However, to protect her building Mrs. Pfeiffer ensured the integrity of anyone desiring to live here by inserting the following statement in the lease, “the 2nd floor of said building shall not be used for any lewd or unlawful purpose.”
