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Heiress gave lights, trolley line
Emelia Chapin, who wintered at a 15-acre estate in Tampa, financed a trolley line extension and street lights on Bayshore Boulevard.
By MICHAEL CANNING, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 30, 2002
Emelia Chapin certainly liked the Ballast Point area of the 1890s. But she thought it could use a little tweaking.
So she had a line from Tampa's streetcar system extended to Ballast Point. That way, she could ride her private trolley car Fair Florida into town.
And she had the Consumers Electric Co., of which she was a major stockholder, install street lights on Bayshore Boulevard. That way, her friends wouldn't have to trek down Bayshore in the dark on their way to visit her at her elegant 15-acre winter estate.
Yes, Chapin was rich. She inherited her New York family's fortune before marrying Chester E. Chapin. Besides their Tampa home (situated on a tract that today's Bayshore Boulevard and Chapin Avenue course through), they had a townhouse in Manhattan, country homes in New Jersey and Massachusetts, a 7,000-acre deer park in the Catskill Mountains and assorted yachts.
Described as beautiful and gracious, Emelia Chapin also was civic-minded. Apart from financing the Bayshore street lights and trolley line extension, she commissioned the pavilion at Ballast Point park. (It was damaged in the 1921 hurricane and later burned down.) She also suggested the park's former name (Jules Verne Park), because she was a fan of the French writer.
In 1899, Tampa Electric Co. acquired Consumers Electric, prompting Chapin's return to New York. She sold her Tampa property in 1903 and died in 1922.
Chateau des Fleurs, Chapin's Tampa home, would long outlive her. Built in 1891, it boasted imported wood paneling and a 39,000-gallon cistern. Its proximity to the bay prompted the Chapins to accessorize the house with a 61-foot sailboat designed by famous yachtsmith Cary Smith.
Chateau des Fleurs burned down in the 1970s.
-- Source: Tampa Bay History Center.
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