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City history imparted along twists and turns
By ANDREW MEACHAM ST. PETERSBURG -- The tour guide pointed to a small, dense island, home to wood storks and egrets, and the only remaining chunk of original territory on what is now Snell Isle. "This would have been, at one time, all mangroves and fiddler crabs and muck," Ray Arsenault told a busload of residents out to learn St. Petersburg history. Real estate baron C. Perry Snell loathed the eclectic architectural styles of the surrounding northeast where you still can find 10 different expressions of home building in the same block, Arsenault said. Snell created the landfill while housing future residents in apartments, each equipped with a Steinway piano. Arsenault teaches history and directs the honors program at the University of South Florida's St. Petersburg campus. On Feb. 2, he donned a toll-booth attendant's shirt and narrated a historical bus tour for the 10th consecutive year. Students enrolled in the Council of Neighborhood Associations' leadership program, many of them past or current neighborhood association presidents, took notes. The tour focused on neighborhoods, which Arsenault called a growing symbol of local identity beneath the city level. St. Petersburg, in which the number of neighborhood associations has grown from 27 when the tours started in 1993 to 107 at last count, has placed itself at the forefront of this trend affirming subcommunities with distinctive identities. From the AAA building on Eighth Street S, the group headed down First Avenue S to Demens Landing, retracing the final approach of the Orange Belt rail line. Russian native Peter Demens founded the railway, which originated in Sanford and helped transform a loosely-defined area known as Pinellas Village into St. Petersburg in the late 1800s. Other big names in this part of the tour included Michigan scion "General" John Williams, a "highfaluting" character," according to Arsenault, who developed rivalries both with Demens and developer Hamilton Disston. In 20 minutes or so, Arsenault's narrative covered the railroad and the development of the downtown waterfront, including the "million-dollar pier" built in 1926 and replaced in the 1960s. Like other Florida cities, St. Petersburg was created as a place to build dreams, Arsenault said. But unlike most, our city packaged and sold itself as a vacation site, as a capital of healthiness, almost from the beginning. "It never went through an industrial phase," Arsenault said. The historian frequently noted the architecture of neighborhoods for clues. The wooden frame vernacular houses in the Round Lake area, from Fifth Street N along Fifth, Sixth and Seventh avenues N, show what the city was like before being re-made in the 1920s. Many other neighborhoods, particularly Old Northeast and Snell Isle, show a profusion of the Mediterranean Revival style that was to follow. "In the architecture you can see the rhythms, the booms and busts, that have made this city," Arsenault said. Arsenault, a Cape Cod native, has lived here since 1980. His book, St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, covers the city up to 1950. A specialist in the civil rights movement, Arsenault has found contradictions in St. Petersburg's makeup. On the one hand, racial segregation has marked the city. The information packet for tour passengers included a 1936 letter to Mayor John Smith from two committee members appointed by Smith "to recommend a district for the segregation of the colored people." The legacy of racial division continues, Arsenault said. Among the historical casualties, he said, are the 18 churches and three graveyards removed from the old Gas Plant area to make way for what is now Tropicana Field. At the same time, the city also has a strong record of civil rights activism. The tour paused to observe Bethel AME church in the remnants of Methodist Town, which Arsenault called "the only black community north of Central Avenue." Arsenault narrated nonstop for the better part of seven hours, pausing only to sip bottled water or offer a quip. He volunteered 34th Street to challenge Tampa's Dale Mabry Highway as one of America's ugliest. On names for neighborhoods, he noted that, "For a flat city, we sure have a lot of "Heights.' " But as driver Rich Calixto navigated the 45-foot bus through tight turns in Roser Park to the wide-open stretches of Pinellas Point Drive, Arsenault laced the day with observations about the city's history and speculations about its future. "This represents a great failure of the will of the community," he said of the dormant development on Fourth Street S that was once the Rutland estate. But he seemed to think that residents have much more to be proud of. "We don't have to be a copy of somewhere else to be a cultural center," Arsenault said. "This city has the courage to be different, and we should glory in that, not try to mimic other cities."
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
