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The STJ Historical Society has an interesting website with some remarkable photos:
http://www.stjohnhistoricalsociety.org/
I'm sometimes overwhelmed by the changes on the island since we first went there in the mid-80s. This makes it clear how drastic the change has been in just the past 40-50 years.
I LOEV STUFF LIKE THIS!!! thank you very much!
Amazing photos! Thanks for posting Lex.
Lex,
Thank you for posting the web site link! Yes, the changes are overwhelming. I have many wonderful and beautiful memories of St. John and its people from the 1970's. Thank god for the memories. I recognize some of the photos from the Library of Congress, Depression Years archive.
Here's the link to the photos that bjh mentions:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fsaPlaces46.html#bottom
The STJ Beach Guide site also has some interesting historical info and more recent photos:
When time travel is perfected, I'm going to spend a week in the East End. Maybe when Vie Mahabir was a little girl or when Guy Benjamin was a little boy.
Lex,
When time travel is perfected to you expectations. Let me know and I will join you!
However, lets stop by the "Out" and see June, and the "Kite" and see Victor. : )
When I think of the change I've seen in just 20 years on STJ, I think there's nothing that illustrates it so clearly as the difference between the Peter Bay of Victor Hall and the Peter Bay of Kenny Chesney. A place like The Kite just couldn't exist on STJ anymore. Patrick's barely can. How I long for yesterday.
My take!! I'm 62 y.o. grew up in the 50's/60's. Had great times. But know what??? I'm having just as much fun today. STJ is changing and so is everything else. Still love going there every year. The real truth is probably that it was a lot more difficult back in "the good old days" both on STJ and any where else.
Enjoy today and don't fret about the past. Ain't nothing you can do about the change.
Take 2.
Promoguy, with all due respect. No one is writing in the above postings that they are not having as much fun today or that they love St. John any less today than yesterday! We are only remembering and reminiscing about wonderful places and the colorful people we meet along the way.
Yes, you are right. It was a whole lot more difficult back in... as you say... "the good old days" that is why we developed such close and lasting friendships within the island community.
_ "As lousy as things are now, tomorrow they will be somebody's good old days."
author: Gerald Barzan
I'm not suggesting one way or the other. I was just commenting on what was and what is. Yeah, nostalgia isn't bad.
There are a few things that I'd really love to see photos of---just to see how they match up with memory.
The Kite would be at the top of the list. What did it actually look like? I'd also like to see Skinny's when it was still named Redbeard's and didn't have the whole complex of shops around it. Fred's and Mooie's, fortunately, still look like they did. As does the Sputnik bar.
I do have some photos of the ferry dock before the building was erected. And shots of Cruz Bay before Grande Bay, the new Wharfside complex, Gallows, Sirenusa. And not many boats in the harbor. It's astonishing to see an older photo of Coral Bay compared to now. And one precious shot I have is from the beach at Haulover looking up at the hills---that villa wasn't there and the road hadn't been cut into the hills. It looks just like it had hundreds of years before.
I'm the web site developer for SJHS. If you have some old photos of STJ, I'd like to do a collection of 'then' and 'now' images, showing the changes on the island. If you can scan the images at > 300 dpi, provide me with the photographer name, approx date, description, title, then I'll get started.
