Many of you may have seen this photo before. I got it from the Rozelle family archive. It shows the first Eldridge home in front of the Imperial Refinery. It was demolished in 1962. Bob Armstrong said he really regretted that decision.
Anyway, I wanted to post it because Miss Lima Johnson mentioned the home in her letter that I posted last week. She said workmen had the screens off the windows, so the house suffered significant damage in the August, 1923 hail storm she described in her letter.
I'm a little shaky on the details, but I've heard this house was constructed in the 1870s without nails. Construction used wooden pegs. It was built on the Sartaria Plantation, which sat roughly south of the Central Prison Farm. Eldridge moved the house near the present site of the Char House in two stages. It's intermediate location was near Dam No. 1, or Cook's Dam, I think. It's final location was just east of the front of the Char House. I don't know the exact date of these moves, but the house was situated at the refinery entrance before the Char House was built in 1925.
In later years (after Eldridge moved to his home near the intersection of Lakeview Drive & Eldridge Boulevard in 1928) the building was a boarding house & tea room run by Annie Albritton. I wish I had some interior photos of this house.
