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Seminole Heights shows off
The revitalized neighborhood offers a variety of houses and two gardens on its annual tour.
By MICHAEL CANNING
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 5, 2001
Once desired as a middle ground between the city and the Sulphur Springs resort, the neighborhood of Seminole Heights is now desired as a middle ground between expensive Hyde Park and outlying suburbs.
A handful of residents of the historic neighborhood want to show you why. During the third annual Old Seminole Heights Home Tour on Sunday, 12 of them will open their doors and garden gates to the public.
The tour originates at the Seminole Garden Center at 5810 N Central Ave. There tour maps will be sold for $5. That will also allow you to opt for one of five HARTline trolleys running the tour route on 15-minute intervals. Proceeds will benefit the Centre for Girls, an after-school and weekend resource facility for adolescent females, affiliated with the Centre for Women.
And it's not just their houses the residents will be showing off, but what they feel is a better way of living.
Greg Barnhill, who owns a house on the tour and is a board member of the Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association, mentions the advent of some modern housing developments that try to emulate the aesthetics of old neighborhoods.
"They're trying to re-create what we already have," Barnhill said, who moved to Seminole Heights in 1992. "It's a great neighborhood that's centrally located. It has the historic homes that Hyde Park (has). And you're not getting a house that looks like the next four houses on the block."
Seminole Heights also differs from the historic enclaves of South Tampa, in that it does not have a fully revitalized commercial base. That, along with its distance from the bay, makes Seminole Heights an affordable historic alternative to pricey areas such as Hyde Park and Palma Ceia. "The prices are reasonable," Barnhill said.
Donna Hanrahan, who owns a 1920 Mediterranean Revival house featured on the tour, moved from Palma Ceia to Seminole Heights two years ago. "I found I couldn't afford to buy in my own neighborhood when it came time to upsize," she said with a laugh. She and her husband, Byron, have a cottage behind their house in which Donna's mother resides.
Although the gentrification of Seminole Heights has been driven primarily by younger professionals moving into the neighborhood, some veteran residents remain. One of them is on the tour, though Bill Leith's garden is the showpiece, not his house.
"I can tell you that the neighborhood in the '30s and '40s looked like the background scenery in the film To Kill a Mockingbird," said Leith, who was born in 1932 and still lives in the house he grew up in. His father built the house in 1925, when Seminole Heights was a stopover between Tampa and the Sulphur Springs resort a couple of miles to the north.
Having witnessed both the rise and decline of the neighborhood, Leith was surprised to see it begin to revitalize again in the late '80s. "Younger people coming in, without a doubt," he says. "Nearness to town. Many parts of Seminole Heights are tree-shaded, and the bungalow style appeals to many people."
Six of the tour's 10 homes are bungalows or have bungalow elements. Colonial Revival, Mediterranean Revival, and post-war vernacular styles are also represented, in houses built between 1912 and 1947. Leith's garden, which sprawls over four lots, and another garden on his street are the tour's two flora showcases.
For the history purists who scoff at post-World War II houses, this might not be their tour.
"It's not a historic home tour," Barnhill said. "It is a home tour of Seminole Heights, which happens to encompass two historic districts. So we're wanting to show everyone that there's a great diversity within Seminole Heights."
Barnhill indicated that houses built within the last decade might be part of future tours. "There are a couple of good examples of positive infill that have been built, or are being built. And we'd like to include those."
Michael Canning can be reached at (813) 226-3408, or at canning@sptimes.com.
AT A GLANCE
Third Annual Old Seminole Heights Home Tour
When: Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
Where: Tour starts at the Seminole Garden Center, 5810 N Central Ave.
Cost: $5
Information: (813) 239-2070
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