Newhall Flower & Gift Shop

Newhall Flower & Gift Shop at 24319 N. San Fernando Road, now called Main Street, previously addressed 743 Spruce Street. All three street names and two address numbers denote the same building. The phone number was Newhall 670, which became 259-1978.

The time is probably around Christmas 1960. The photographer is Harold G. Deines, the Hart High School photography instructor. Deines provided a virtually (but not quite) identical nighttime shot of the flower shop for the 1961 Hart High Tomahawk yearbook.

The owners of the shop at this time were Dale and Laurav [cq] Taylor of 931 Walnut Street. The Taylors acquired the business in 1952.

The flower shop started life as Peggy's Flower Shop in April 1948. "Peggy" was Halie E. Hilburn, wife of Ed Hilburn, who simultaneously opened Hilburn's Funeral Chapel at (what became) 24353 N. Walnut Street. A funeral parlor and flower shop went hand-in-hand.

Halie/Peggy sold the shop to the Taylors, who ran it for a decade and sold it in 1962 to local business mogul Don Guglielmino, whose Newhall Hardware store sat directly across the street. Guglielmino sold the flower shop in 1966 to Donald L. and Ina Mae Stewart.

In the 2010s, the location housed an Army Surplus store.

HAROLD G. DEINES (1922-1970) brought his family to the Santa Clarita 1954 and taught photography and drivers' education at Hart High School. He also was the proprietor of Pin N' Pen Photo Stationers in Newhall. Harold and wife Esther were married in 1944 in Kansas, where Harold was the sports and society photographer for the Wichita Eagle newspaper. They lived briefly in Tucson, Ariz., prior to their arrival in Newhall (Chestnut Street), where they raised four children — Glenn, Anita (Barnes), Sylvia (Wortman) and Myrna (Litt). Not yet 50, Harold succumbed to a long illness; Esther (1921-2009) continued her teaching and adminstrative career with the Newhall School District, sang in the church choir (Santa Clarita United Methodist) and was active in the SCV Senior Center and Friends of the Library.