Symbols on Hollywood Seaboard station

[JasW]

I was railfanning around the old Hollywood SAL (now Amtrak and Tri-Rail) station over the weekend, and noticed these four symbols on a concrete shield above what I imagine was the direct entrance to the station master's office on the west side of the depot, north of the west (and now blocked off) entrance to the waiting room. (The red arrow in the second picture shows the precise location of the symbols.)

The one on the lower right is obviously a RR track icon. The lower left is a steam locomotive bell. The double "s" on the upper left I would guess has something to do with Seaboard, but boy does that look like the Waffen SS symbol. (Of course, the station house was built in the late 20s, so that resemblance is obviously coincidental.) And the upper right looks like a ticket puncher. Can anybody shed any light on these symbols, why there were used, and why they were put on this particular part of the station house?

[Ocala Mike]

You will have to research the history of Hollywood, FL in general and developer Joseph W.Young, Jr. in particular to get your answer. He pretty much single-handedly designed everything in Hollywood back in the 20's.

[JasW]

You will have to research the history of Hollywood, FL in general and developer Joseph W.Young, Jr. in particular to get your answer. He pretty much single-handedly designed everything in Hollywood back in the 20's.

I'm not sure, but I don't think so. I know both histories pretty well. Joe Young was wiped out by the time this station was built, a victim of the land boom crash in 1926 (and the station was also pretty far west of the Hollywood of the time). While that might not technically forestall some early involvement by him in the design, the station is also basically the mirror image of the SAL station several miles north in Fort Lauderdale (the passenger portion in Lauderdale being on the north rather than the south end of the station) -- right down to the same station master's door. I'll have to look to see if the same shield with symbols is above it.

Edit: I meant to add, the station did not open until 1928, over a year after the first Orange Blossom Special puffed through in January 1927. After the September 1926 hurricane, the Hollywood City Commission -- keen on anybody willing to build anything in the then-devasted area -- eagerly agreed to grant the SAL the right of way through town. So I'm pretty sure Young had nothing to do with it. More likely the West Palm architecture firm that designed most/all of the SAL stations in South Florida.

[Ocala Mike]

Perhaps someone at this site will have your answer:

http://www.aclsal.org/

[JasW]

Perhaps someone at this site will have your answer:

http://www.aclsal.org/

Good idea, Mike, thanks. Unfortunately, Firefox repeatedly identifies their site as being infected with "badware."

[262]

The two symbols in the upper left square look like runeic alaphabet Sig runes(acient norse viking)as in the nazi chant Sig Hiel.Sometimes used as a sign of victory.Could it be ment to denote Seaboard System ?

[JasW]

The two symbols in the upper left square look like runeic alaphabet Sig runes(acient norse viking)as in the nazi chant Sig Hiel.Sometimes used as a sign of victory.Could it be ment to denote Seaboard System ?

That was actually my first gut reaction, until I realized there wasn't a Seaboard System until the 80s, during the period between SCL and CSX. I thought the symbols might have been a later addition during this period, but Seaboard had long since given up this station, at least for passenger use (so why the ticket punch?). Plus the SS symbols in the Seaboard System logo were (for good reason) tilted more to their side:

[JasW]

FWIW, although I haven't found out what the symbols are all about, I did discover that the door they are above is/was not the station master's office, but rather was the one that, in keeping with the era's racial segregation laws, led into the separate waiting room for African-Americans.

[Ocala Mike]

JasW, here are some other useful(?) links you can try:

http://wpb.org Go to Historical Preservation and look up an architect named Clarke.
http://www.hollywoodhistoricalsociety.org
http://www.hollywoodchamber.org

Good luck, and let us know what you find out.


Ocala Mike

[JasW]

Thanks, Mike. I'm way ahead of you, though! The best resource, it turns out, is actually the City of Hollywood itself. They have a draft resolution from 2004 online -- with supporting application exhibits -- that sought to have the station named to the National Register of Historic Places. (Apparently, the nomination went nowhere for reasons unknown.) It has a ton of info on the station, albeit nothing on those symbols with the indirect exception of explaining what the door below it was for.

The city's archives and records division also has some photos of the station when it was first built in the 1920s and when the first Seaboard diesel pulled into town in the 1940s. Note that you can see the very edge of what appears to be the concrete shield on the left hand side of the 1920s photo, indicating that it is indeed original to the building (and perhaps has something to do with the door's status):





I've long known that the old West Palm architecture firm of Harvey & Clarke designed all of the Seaboard stations in South Florida from West Palm on south (and in Fort Myers and Naples), but I only recently found out that it was one architect of theirs in particular, Gustav Maass, who was actually responsible for the designs and construction drawings. You can see the design similarities -- the Hialeah and Naples stations are identical, and so are the Delray, Deerfield Beach, and Homestead stations and the Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale stations.

[CarterB]

The S shaped symbols may be the sig rune "Guido von List in his "Armanen runes" called the rune "Sig", apparently based on Sigel, thus changing the concept associated with it from "Sun" to "victory" (German Sieg), arriving at a sequence "Sig", "Tyr" in his row, yielding Sigtyr (God of victory), a name of Odin. However the actual sig rune pre NSDAP was much more upright. I'm guessing the S shapes denote something different.

[JasW]

The middle part of the "s" on all of the sig runes I've seen images of are horizontal, although some incline up slightly on a plane from left to right. The middle part of the "s" on these symbols inclines sharply up on a plane from right to left, more like a stylized "s" (i.e., like those on the 1980s Seaboard System logo). Before it incorporated as the Seaboard Air Line Railway in 1900, the railroad was known as the "Seaboard Air-Line System" for marketing purposes, or so says Wikipedia; maybe it was being called the "Seaboard System" for marketing purposes at the time of the station's construction in the 1920s, although I've seen nothing to indicate that it was.

On a marginally related note, I just found out the Seaboard station in Boynton Beach was torn down about five years ago. I had known it had long been used by a private business (a steel company), but had assumed it was still standing, and was going to take a road trip up there in the near future. Then I discovered this from a June 2007 article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's archives:

The 80-year-old railway station was demolished last August when the city issued the property owner a demolition permit. Neighbors contend this was illegal and were appalled that no attempts were made to save the structure, which they said was historic. The city did not assess the structure's historical significance, planning director Michael Rumpf said.

source

What a bunch of maroons they must have in the city government in Boynton Beach. And I love the reporter's characterization of the neighbors' description of the station as being simply a contention on their part. In an area with very little history, this kind of thing is appalling. BTW, here is a pic of the Boynton Beach SAL station from the 1940s:

[JasW]

It turns out the same symbols are indeed on the Fort Lauderdale station, again right above the entrance to the former "colored" waiting room. Fort Lauderdale is essentially a mirror image of the Hollywood station, although it has retained more original details (see how the old photo of the Hollywood station entrance compares with the mirror image present day view of the Lauderdale station).

[262]

Looking at it relation to the other symbols bell(telephone ?),Ticket punch,RR tracks,perhaps the bolt symbols are some kind of art deco pictagraph for telegraph station.