U.S. Naval Air Station, Senior Officers' Quarters Q-3, Q-3 North Avenue, Pensacola, Escambia County, FL

Significance: Quarters 3, historically known as Quarters G, is one of eight unique residences at NAS Pensacola representing a distinct period in the development of the Pensacola Navy Yard. The two-story, irregular plan, masonry and wood-frame residence exhibits Italianate influences and features a hipped roof and prominent covered wraparound porches on three sides of the building. The core structure of Quarters 3 was built in the 1850s and served as detached kitchen to earlier quarters at the installation. Fires set by the Confederate Army during the Civil War destroyed the quarters, with the exception of the detached brick kitchens. For ten years following the Civil War, the Navy used the 1850s brick kitchens as temporary quarters for naval officers. The residences endured an overall lack of funding in the postwar period until the mid-1870s, when appropriations for improvements of several quarters, including Quarters 3, wee approved. The improvements, which converted most of the antebellum temporary quarters along North Avenue into larger and more livable residences, were undertaken by the Navy to address the poor living conditions faced by officers at the time. In 1877, Quarters 3 attained its current appearance with the addition of a second story and wood-frame verandas and housed senior officers of the Navy until the closure of the Pensacola Navy Yard in 1911. In the years following the establishment of Naval Aeronautical Station Pensacola in 1914, Quarters 3 continued to provide housing for senior officers of the Navy until it was damaged in 2004 by Hurricane Ivan. The building is currently vacant and continues to display qualities of mid- to late nineteenth century military residential architecture. Quarters 3, as well as the seven other extant quarters on North Avenue, survives as a tangible link to the history of the Pensacola Navy Yard in the post-Civil War period.
Survey number: HABS FL-516
Building/structure dates: 1850 Initial Construction