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Father of Festival of States was biggest patron of city

The benefactor, who depleted his fortune, built a church in memory of his father and a hospital in memory of his mother.

By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL
Published March 23, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - After arriving in 1896, Edwin H. Tomlinson swept the city and its children into his arms.

As St. Petersburg's greatest benefactor, Tomlinson erected the city's first hospital, first open-air post office and an Episcopal Church. He introduced the automobile locally. The Patron Saint once treated noted pioneer Marguerite Blocker and her 299 schoolmates to a steamboat ride and their first visit to Tampa.

"Mr. Tomlinson opened doors to vistas," Blocker said of Tomlinson, a slender bachelor with twinkling eyes and a goatee. "He was sitting up there next to the Lord."

Tomlinson built the city's first brick school. He initiated the city's first school cadet company and its first fife and drum corps. He helped organize the celebration that became the Festival of States and constructed a 2,500-seat gymnasium-auditorium. Thousands of souls sampled Tomlinson's Fountain of Youth.

"St. Petersburg has been dilatory in properly honoring Mr. Tomlinson," St. Petersburg Times pioneer journalist Dudley Haddock wrote. "His name should be perpetuated in a great park, a major street or avenue or an entire district of the city. If ever the name of St. Petersburg (were) changed, it would not be amiss to make it Tomlinson."

At age 18 in 1862, Tomlinson became a $4-a-month bank clerk. The Nesquan-tucket, Conn., native served the Union in the Civil War and later produced oil from Pennsylvania fields. In Aiken, S.C., in 1868, he helped open the South's first tourist hotel.

As a mining and oil official from 1874 to 1897, Tomlinson traveled throughout Alaska, British Columbia and America. He visited St. Petersburg in 1891 and moved here in 1896. That year Tomlinson gave 250 flags to area children and financed the Washington's Birthday Parade, later the Festival of States.

A Tomlinson donation in 1897 established an orchestra at the Graded School at Fifth Street and Second Avenue N. In 1899 he built St. Peter's Episcopal Church to venerate his father, Peter. Tomlinson later honored his mother, Augusta, with Augusta Memorial Hospital, which became Mound Park and Bayfront Medical Center.

Tomlinson's home at Fourth Street and Second Avenue S featured a 137-foot tower established for the radio experiments of Gugliemo Marconi. The U.S. government gained charge of the research elsewhere, however, and lightning damaged the tower in 1901. Tomlinson towers also existed at Pine Key and St. Pete Beach.

Near his home about 1900, Tomlinson built a pier and drove the Fountain of Youth. He later sold the pier to the city without gain. According to a 1971 analysis, the fountain's water contained more lithium "a treatment for manic depression" than any county spring checked. Today a marker identifies the fountain near Progress Energy Park.

Tomlinson - a Boy Scout, YMCA and American Legion sponsor - opened Florida's first Manual Training School in 1901 at Second Avenue and Fifth Street N. The $10,000 structure was the city's first brick school and offered studies including homemaking and manual arts. Tomlinson later deeded the structure to the city.

In 1902 Tomlinson built the city's largest building, the $15,000 Manual Training Annex at First Avenue and Fourth Street S. The auditorium seated 2,500 people and had a $2,000 pipe organ. Tomlinson sold the annex to St. Petersburg in 1903 for $10,000 to use as a city hall.

By 1902, Tomlinson had organized a cadet company and a fife and drum corps at the Graded School. Three years later he introduced the automobile to Central Avenue. "He couldn't go two blocks without getting stuck in the sand," historian Karl H. Grismer wrote. "The first horseless carriage ever driven on St. Petersburg streets."

In 1924, Tomlinson received the Smitz Silver Cup for exemplary citizenship. Nine years later he learned that a vocational school was to bear his name. With tears, he said it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him. Mirror Lake-Tomlinson Adult Vocational Center is the only standing honor to the great benefactor.

On Dec. 6, 1938, Tomlinson died in Tampa. He was 94. His benevolence had milked his fortune to just $9,773. The American Legion fashioned a military funeral for Tomlinson at Royal Palm Cemetery.

In 1956, Haddock wrote Times editor Nelson Poynter: "All in all, Tomlinson was Mr. "St. Petersburg' for years but darn few are aware of it."

Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@msn.com

[Last modified March 23, 2005, 01:00:04]