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Developer preserves downtown landmark
By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL ST. PETERSBURG -- At the Snell Arcade last week, developer Peter C. Fischbach discussed immortality. "We want to save the Arcade for the city forever," Fischbach, the structure's owner, said amid a crowd of city officials and historical preservationists. At the ceremony, Fischbach announced his granting of an easement to the building's facade to the Florida Trust for Historical Preservation. It all means the Snell landmark, now entering its 75th year, can never be changed without preservation trust permission. In an earlier statement, Fischbach said that donating the easement will ensure the Arcade will be around for people to enjoy for another 75 years and another after that. John Tarapani, president of the trust, concurred. "The building will be preserved for perpetuity. We own the look of the building. The only things that can be done are improvements." The ceremony began Thursday afternoon on the Arcade's third-floor patio, where, 70 years ago, dancers mesmerized patrons at what was then Spanish Bob's nightclub. "From Day One, since buying the building in February 1994, I wanted to keep it the way it was," said Fischbach, who plans to create 11 residential units and space for seven commercial concerns within the structure's 45,000 square feet. City Council member Virginia Littrell paced as she addressed the crowd. "This is a wonderful way to go," she said of the easement agreement. "It is the best thing you could do, Peter. We are incredibly blessed that preservation is on fire here in 2003." In 1925, Commodore Perry Snell was offered $1-million for the famous Durant Block at Fourth Street and Central Avenue. He refused the offer, hoping instead to build a $750,000 beautiful building on the 405 Central Ave. lot. "Snell building begins at once," read a St. Petersburg Times headline on April 28, 1928. Amid the urns, shields, portrait medallions and fantasy columns, Snell placed within the Arcade mosaics and exotic statuary from Mexico and Europe. Outside, the first mezzanine and second floors extended 130 feet on Central Avenue and 100 feet on Fourth Street. The landmark often was called "exposition architecture." Wrote developer and historian Walter P. Fuller: "Business wise, the building was uneconomic. A multi-story tower with elevator with one office suite per floor is financial hari kari. But he built it. It satisfied his urge to create beauty." When the Depression slashed funds needed to complete Snell Isle, Snell mortgaged the Arcade. He later defaulted and lost the building and the property. In 1937, Walgreen and Company purchased the landmark for $500,000. They remodeled it at a cost of $100,000. Banker Hubert Rutland bought the Arcade in 1943. "During the 1950s, much of the building's unique charms was hidden by so-called 'modernization,' " stated a history provided by Fischbach. In 1980, John W. Galbraith of John W. Galbraith Securities Fund Management Inc. purchased the neglected Arcade for $1-million. Charles Canerday, then of Architects LaDelfa Canerday, completed an almost $2.5-million restoration. "A tremendous building," said Canerday, 61. "Nothing matches its character and grandeur. It was my greatest challenge." In 1982, the Arcade was accepted into the U.S. Department of Interior Registrar of Historic Places. In a Washington, D.C., ceremony in 1983, the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded Canerday and developer Robert B. Brooks that year's Trust Honor Award. "The Snell Arcade survives as the once and future focal point of downtown St. Petersburg," Times art critic Charles Benbow said in 1983. "Survival required foresight, ingenuity, risk, devotion, sensitivity and skill. Survival required surgery." Fischbach's surgery echoes today throughout Snell's Arcade, which was designated a local historic site in June 1986 and has since served as an office building with retail stores. -- Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@msn.com.
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