How'd you like this ride?

The weather is lovely and I want to ride my bicycle, but it needs some servicing.  So I'll share some images of bicycling throughout the years in Tampa.   It's great to see the old bicycles, however I am even more amazed to think of the conditions early cyclists faced in Tampa back in the day.

Leo Day, Postal Telegraph Messenger, 12 years old, and a very knowing lad. (See report of L.W.H.) Location: Tampa, Florida.

Under the bridge downtown

My friend Cesar of CesarDPhoto.com recently posted some pictures on his blog that caught my attention.  I enjoy taking my bicycle out for the occasional leisurely ride down bayshore or through downtown and sometimes I even ride it to work.  One of my biggest gripes about bicycling from South Tampa / Bayshore area into downtown is the difficult and sometimes dangerous trip over the river.  Maneuvering the one-way bridges and narrow and steep curving sidewalks that lead to them are not easy for a casual or new rider.  So I was surprised to see Cesar's photo of the pedestrian path under the Platt Street bridge, I thought that one may be there but never took the time to check for myself.

For easier browsing of the Burgert Bros. Collection try...

http://www.lamartin.com/BurgertPivotCollection/index.htm

If you haven't already stumbled upon this great website, check it out today.  The library's searchable database is a little cumbersome and slow when it comes to looking at the Burgert Bros. online collection.  Mr. LaMartin has created a wonderful index site.  Now you can instantly see the photos you are searching for.  You can browse by year if you wish, or see all those photos that weren't tagged with a year to find something that a search won't.  The site requires the  Microsoft Silverlight plugin.  Thank you Mr. LaMartin.

As the caption clearly states there are over 13000 digital images of photos from the Burgert Bros. Collection on the Tampa library's website, here they all are tiled out for your searching enjoyment:

Fall comes to Tampania

Fall begins in approximately 6 hours and I couldn't be more ecstatic.  From the second the humidity digs iin ts claws in mid-May the dread sets in, ugh another Tampa Summer!  In many ways it was an excruciatingly long summer, and as I get older they just seem to get longer and harder to bear.  And these last few official hours of summer symbolize the hardest wait of all, the time during which the calendar says fall and yet you are still waiting for that first under 90 breezy and dry day that leads into an even cooler night so you can open your windows and hopefully leave them open for months on end.  Well that usually doesn't happen til October, so still we sit and wait.  

Historically the tourist season has been October through May, and Tampa and the rest of Florida would shrink down to a small permanent population during the unbearable and non-air conditioned summer months.  Board of Trade signs use to boast in big letters "Tampa - Florida's Year Round Destination" while in smaller print the truth comes out "Winter months - October through May", as in the sign below that greeted new comers and visitors at Tampa's Union Station.

Luckily modern Floridians enjoy a more comfortable and climate controlled year round situation.  So, as the weather starts to get more bearable and comfortable, I hope to get out more to take more pictures and find more buildings and interesting features to write new posts on.  In the meantime, the waiting begins.  Here's to a pleasant and fruitful Fall!

Tampa's "Oldest" House in peril

It seems that historic preservation advocates are on top of things lately.  The story of the threatened status of Tampa's "Oldest" known house has been popping up all over the place lately.  As much as I am an advocate for historic preservation, I wanted to check more into the facts of the story as all causes are subject to sensationalism these days.  Plus I don't always trust the dates of houses shown by the property appraisers office.  The image above is from Google Earth and will be used as a comparison for the house's layout.  Now off to the trusty Tampa Library's Sanborn maps site to do some investigation.  Supposedly, Tampa's current oldest house, at 3210 E Eighth Ave. (shown above), was originally built on the Southeast corner of the City Hall block at Jackson and Florida in 1842.  The current City hall building was built in 1915.

Sarasota School in Tampa

The Sarasota school of architecture has recently undergone a resurrgence in popularity, prompted by several books and the recent fight and unfortunate demolition of Paul Rudolph's masterpiece, Riverview High School in Sarasota.  Two styles of regional modernism emerged in Florida in the mid-twentieth century, the Sarasota School on the west central coast and Tropical Modernism in South Florida.  There are examples of both schools of work in Tampa, but the Sarasota School is the most prominent of the two here. While most of the members of the Sarasota School came from other areas of the country, Tampa boasted the only native, Mark Hampton.  Mark Hampton worked directly under Paul Rudolph in the Rudolph and Twitchell firm. Hampton then moved back to Tampa where opened his own office and worked in the area until the 1970s, when he moved to Coconut Grove.  Hampton's most famous designs in Tampa were Galloway's furniture gallery, the old St. Mary's Episcopal church, the Horizon House and the Webb residence.

Galloway's Furniture gallery

Franklin Exchange Buildings - Parasitic Modernism

In the 1960s downtown Tampa experienced a new age of growth.  Up until 1966 the Floridan Hotel remained the tallest building in Tampa.  Office space in downtown was filling up fast and land was being gobbled up by the new interstate and crosstown projects, ultimately creating new barriers for growth within the central business district.  There was nowhere left to go but UP!