Ghosts of the garrison

It was a lovely day for a bike ride, so I headed for downtown.  It was still a little too chilly in the shadows of the downtown skyscrapers so I pedaled over towards the parking wasteland of South downtown.  I'm always fascinated when I travel through this area at how the bodies of the buildings that once dotted this area are still visible.  Most the buildings were knocked down only to their foundations.

Sometimes a foot or two of wall was left to serve as a type of barrier between the street and lot.

Railroad Yards

One of my favorite images in the Burgert Brothers Collection is this cirkut picture taken of Atlantic Coast Line railroad shop employees grouped in front of and on a locomotive at the Uceta Rail Yards taken in 1929:

I don't know what is the most interesting part of this photo; the process, the fact that the photographers got all or the majority of these people to stand still, the diversity of the workers, or the building looming to the right?  These rail yards are still at the heart of CSXs operations in Tampa and it appears that old shop is still standing.  Take a ride down Adamo between Tampa and Brandon and on the east side of 50th street you drive past a lot filled with trees, punctuated by a signed entranced to CSX.  You would never know that this building and a whole rail yard lie beyond.  However if you drive the elevated crosstown expressway and peer over to the yard you will see this building.

Picture taken 1988

Oh, that old Infrastructure!

Well it's been awhile since I've last posted, and as inspiration is lacking I'll pull a post from the archives of unpublished thoughts.  So here it is a look at kooky bits of infrastructure from Tampa's past, or things that just look plain crazy to our modern eyes.  These are all things that were built to help the growing city flow, literally.

1.  WASTE WATER TREATMENT FIT FOR A KING!

City sewage disposal plant, septic tank building, on northwest corner of Twiggs and Twelfth Streets: Tampa, Fla

In what is now the channelside district, near the seaboard square apartments.

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!