Sidney Harden's grocery store provided specialty foods at the dawn of city growth and in the shadow of Jim Crow. He died recently at age 84.
By JON WILSON, Times Staff Writer
Published November 2, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Sidney Harden Sr., whose 22nd Street S grocery store provided a cultural market while serving a segregation-era neighborhood for nearly half a century, died Oct. 25. He was 84.
Mr. Harden opened the store at 901 22nd St. S during the mid 1940s, just before the end of World War II. St. Petersburg was about to experience a development boom and population explosion, but had yet to emerge from the shadows of Jim Crow.
The store stood on the southwest corner of 22nd Street and Ninth Avenue, the main crossroads in the city's busiest African-American neighborhood.
Other groceries served the area, but Mr. Harden's had a reputation for its cultural foods and for its rite-of-passage status among youngsters who lived nearby.
"They were famous for their chocolate chip cookies," said Minson Rubin, who lived in Jordan Park, whose boundaries stretched virtually to the store. It was a sign of maturity to take a solo trip to Mr. Harden's, Rubin said.
"That was the prize for getting out of the house. You were considered to be a big boy. Or walking home by yourself. You were growing up," he said.
The store's specialty foods drew many customers, said Horace Nero, a retired St. Petersburg police officer who grew up a couple of blocks away.
"Many, many times in the neighborhood, some of the other stores didn't have favorite foods associated with our particular ethnic background. You would go to Sidney and he would have it," Nero said.
Meat from rabbits, turtles, goats, raccoons and opossums often filled the counter, particularly before a weekend.
It was an era when people still raised - or trapped - their own food in parts of St. Petersburg. Some would sell game to Mr. Harden, who also kept live animals behind the store.
"People used to hang wild food out on lines in Jordan Park" to drain, Rubin said.
Mr. Harden was one of a dwindling list of business people who helped the African-American thoroughfare thrive before integration and the coming of Interstate 275 changed the neighborhood dynamic. Among those remaining are Paul Barco, who still lives in the 22nd Street building that housed his store, and William H. "Buddy" West, a longtime barber.
Mr. Harden's store remained open until 1992. A faded mural on an outside wall advertising items and their prices was painted over in 2002.
A service is at 10:30 a.m. today at the Creal Funeral Home chapel at 1940 Seventh Ave. S. Burial will be at 2:30 p.m. at Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.
