Something else that disappeared, over the years, to make room for expansion, was the enormous Indan Shell Mound that was on the hospital grounds and for which Mound Park was named. At some point, the need to grow the hospital became so great that the city leveled the mound – something that I am very sure would not be allowed to happen today!

For a larger view of any of the photos, just click on the photo itself.

The Stetson campus is located in Gulfport, in the south/west end of St. Petersburg.  This beautiful campus actually started out as the Rolyat Hotel.  It was built in 1925 for developer Frank Taylor (yes, the very odd hotel name is just his last name, spelled backwards…)  Unfortunately, the Florida land boom was followed by a bust, and after a few years, the hotel went out of business.  It operated for awhile as The Florida Military Academy, but eventually was purchased by Stetson University to become the new home of the College of Law, back in 1953.  Classes began in September of 1954 and have been going on at this location ever since.

It’s a truly beautiful campus, worth parking and walking around, if you love old buildings and especially Mediterranean Revival ones.  In addition to the amazing buildings, the campus itself is just a really peaceful place, packed with shade trees and open areas.  The campus even has a great swimming pool, so there must be an assumption that, at some point, students get to take a break for some recreation.  This is truly a gem and a must-see if you’re new to St. Petersburg or have never discovered the campus on your own.  If you’d like to view the full-sized image, please click on the photo below and it will open in a new window.

Post Card of Open Air Post Office (click on picture for larger image)

St. Petersburg has a very unique and beautiful post office in the heart of downtown.  It’s known as the Open Air Post Office because, as you can see in this late 1940′s or early 1950′s era postcard, the main areas of the post office are not enclosed.  If you were to walk through the arches that you see, you’d be in the area of hundreds of post office boxes, as well as mail drops.  Our Open Air Post Office is located at the southwest corner of Fourth Street North and First Avenue north, diagonally across the street from Williams Park.

This post office was completed and opened for business in September of 1917, so we are just a few years away from its centennial celebration!  And, interestingly enough, this was not the first open air post office in St. Petersburg.  Prior to the opening of this facility, there was a much smaller open air post office a block away.  That one was built in 1907, on the northeast corner of Central Avenue and Fourth Street.  But our growing city quickly outgrew that building, and in 1915, the post office had to move temporarily to the first floor of the City Hall of that day, located on Fourth Street South.  That same year, a congressional appropriation of $102,000 was granted for the construction of a new, large, full service post office that would be able to serve the needs of the city for years to come.

Although initial plans drawn up for the post office involved a building built several feet above street level, with lots of steps leading up to it, our local Postmaster didn’t like those plans, and he worked to design a building at street level, with no steps, and one that was open on all sides and would allow postal patrons to have access to their post office boxes 24 hours a day.  The result of his plans is history – a gorgeous Mediterranean Revival building with rich architectural detail and a grand feel to it.  And, perhaps more importantly, a structure that has stood the test of time – this building is still operating as an active post office today.  In 1975, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

To provide a little comparison, I scanned an old post card of the Open Air Post Office and that’s the picture that you see above.  Then, a few days ago, I took my own photo of the building, and that’s the shot you see below.  As you can see, it looks pretty much the same!  And you might also notice the Snell Arcade/Rutland building – the tall structure just behind the post office – it also stands proud today, as beautiful as ever.  This post office is worth a first hand look, so if you have a few minutes sometime and are near downtown St. Petersburg, park your car and walk through it and enjoy feeling a bit of history around you.  This is one of those cases where you really can say, “They don’t make ‘em like this any more… 

The Open Air Post Office, October 2009 (click on photo for larger image)

Open Air Post Office - Within the Arches (click on photo for larger image)

Instead, I’m going to take the opportunity to dispel the myth of Little St. Mary’s. 

Yesterday and the day before, I posted about two buildings either in or near downtown St. Petersburg – one is a public rest room, one is a Catholic church. It might not seem that such buildings could have very much in common, but, in fact, they do.  They were both constructed in the 1920′s, during St. Petersburg’s great development boom time.  They were both designed by the very highly respected architect Henry S. Taylor.  And they were both designed using Romanesque Revival architectural styling.  I’ve reposted pictures of each of them below.  Please take a moment to click on the pictures to bring up a full-size version of the images, then compare them.  When you do, you’ll see that there’s a lot more similarity than just the fact that they’re both Romanesque Revival.  It almost looks like one is a pint-sized version of the other.

St. Mary's Church

Comfort Station One

That strong similarity led to the birth of a myth, and it’s a myth that has been around for decades and one that continues to be reinforced, even today.  The story is that architect Henry Taylor designed the church and oversaw the construction of it, but the church came into hard times financially, and so they did not fully pay Taylor for his work.  Annoyed by the underpayment and newly hired by the City of St. Petersburg to design a beautiful public restroom for the growing waterfront area downtown, Taylor decided to ’get back’ at church officials by designing the public restroom to look like a miniature version of the church.  And so, Comfort Station One came to be known by many as “Little St. Mary’s”.  Even today, if you take one of the commercial tours available in the downtown area, they tell the Little St. Mary’s story as though it is the truth.

But the facts prove otherwise.  Through a simple search of newspaper archives, I found an article in the May 7, 1927 issue of St. Petersburg’s Evening Independent that stated that the construction of Comfort Station One was 30% complete as of that date.  And St. Petersburg’s own web site states that Comfort Station One opened to the public in 1927. 

As for St. Mary’s Church, an article that I located in the December 25th, 1928 issue of the St. Petersburg Times has the following headline and subheadline:  ”Catholics Buy Site For New Local Church  — St. Mary’s Edifice Will Be Built on Fourth Street at Fifth Avenue South”.  It’s pretty clear, then, that if Comfort Station One opened in 1927 and the land for the new St. Mary’s Church was just purchased at the end of 1928, the rest room design was not a retribution for some underpayment for the church design.  The timing is just completely wrong.  But it was a fun story, and with the two buildings looking so much alike, it was an easy one to convince people of…

Today, I present to you St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, located at the corner of 4th Street and 5th Avenue South, just about a mile southwest of Comfort Station One.  St. Mary’s Church was also designed by Henry S. Taylor in the 1920′s and is also a spectacular example of  the Romanesque Revival style. 

St. Mary’s had already been an active church in St. Petersburg for many years when the new church was built, but this newer, bigger, better version that was constructed in the 1920′s still stands today and is still functional in its original role of a Catholic Church.  Although it has aged like any grand old building does, in 1995 the parish began a two year campaign to raise $300,000.  The money was spent to completely restore the church building to its original glory.  The walls of the church are two feet thick, it has Italian and German stained glass windows, seven balconies, several grand archways, and marble floors. 

I have driven past this striking building for many years, and I can tell you that it catches my eye every single time that I drive by.  If you’d like to pay a visit to this beautiful church, it’s waiting for you,  just two minutes from downtown St. Petersburg. 

St. Mary's Church (click for larger view)

Comfort Station One (click for larger view)

St. Petersburg has an abundance of beautiful historic buildings. Many of them have long since transitioned from their original purpose to some new function, such as the old Seaboard Freight Train station that has been renovated and is now the St. Petersburg Clay Company.  But sometimes, one of these great old buildings manages to survive and continue to function in its original role, and today’s post is about just such a building. 

St. Petersburg, in the 1920′s, was in its boom times.  Development was strong, investors were investing, and people were flocking here from all over the country.  There were beautiful homes being built and beautiful shops and hotels.  When the city council decided, in 1927, that we needed a public restroom, they opted to build one that was not just functional, but would be aesthetically pleasing and would be an asset to the downtown that was rapidly developing.

So, to that end, they hired architect Henry S. Taylor, the same architect that designed the Vinoy Hotel, along with several other St. Petersburg buildings.  The decision was made to build the new rest room at the northeast corner of Bayshore Drive and Second Ave NE, which was right on the Vinoy basin and at the base of the pier.  The lot was quite small, and that factor lent itself nicely to the octagonal shape of the building, a shape that had its origins in the Greek Cross shape used in early Roman churches.  The architectural style was Romanesque Revival, and the building was built with several different colors of brick, something frequently seen in Romanesque Revival buildings.

The end result, which was given the name “Comfort Station One”, was a truly remarkable building for any purpose, but especially for a public restroom.  A prominent national magazine, The American City, featured the new comfort station in its February 1929 issue, praising it and praising the city for building a comfort station of such beauty.  Comfort Station One lives on today, providing comfort for thousands of people walking through the neighborhood each year who are in need of just the sort of comfort that this beautiful building offers.

[Note:  Tomorrow's post will be of another St. Petersburg Romanesque Revival building designed by Henry Taylor, St. Mary's Church.]

Comfort Station One (click for larger view)

Well, one of its early homes was in a building at 5th Street and 2nd Avenue North.  But by 1916, St. Petersburg had experienced a 46% increase in school enrollment, and the existing school could not accommodate the growing student body.  Plans were drawn up to construct a new high school on the western side of Mirror Lake and construction was begun, with the building being completed in November of 1919.  The school opened to students in February of 1920. 

That structure served as St. Petersburg High School from 1920 until the end of 1926, when the new St. Pete High opened.  But after the Mirror Lake building stopped being a high school, it became the St. Petersburg Girl’s Junior High School for five years, then Mirror Lake Junior High School for 33 years.  It shut down in 1964 but reopened in 1967 as the Mirror Lake Adult Education Center, operating until 1985.

After shutting down in 1985, the building was sold by the public school system and, in 1991, it was transformed into condominiums.  It’s great that this happened, because it might otherwise have just become another obsolete, unused building that would eventually have faced destruction.  But it’s a beautiful building that sits in front of very picturesque Mirror Lake, and it had so many great features that made it a  natural for transformation to private condominium homes.

The building is four stories, designed in Mission Revival style.  Architectural historians describe the Mission Revival style as exhibiting subtle stylistic elements that served as a precursor to the extremely popular Mediterranean Revival style that took St. Petersburg by storm in the 1920′s.  The basis of the Mission Revival style was a simplicity of form with a minimalist approach to surface decoration.  This St. Petersburg High building has a square style with the front facade set back enough to form an atrium.  The sides are perpendicular sections with flat roofs and they have gable ends that emulate parapets.  The outside walls are covered with a stucco that is embedded with very small, multi-colored Chattahoochee stones which give the building a unique hue. 

In the photograph below, you can see the beautiful detail of the front entryway.  In addition to the arched skylight, the columns, and the rays that extend past the skylight onto the surface of the wall, you can see that the St. Petersburg High School name was carved into the wall, and this photo, which I took just a few weeks ago, shows that the name still stands proud today.

The building is now known as 701 Mirror Lake Drive, and you can click the link for a map and directions.  With such a wonderful exterior structure plus beautiful interior detail and the high ceilings inherent in this sort of building, the renovation of the interior back in 1991 resulted in some extraordinary condominiums.  Next time you’re in the downtown area, take a few minutes, turn towards Mirror Lake Drive, and look at this amazing building!  And if you think you might be interested in living in a very cool, very historic school building, less than one minute from downtown St. Petersburg, give me a call – there are currently two condominiums in the building for sale.  One of them is a one bedroom, one bath, the other is a two bedroom, two bath.  Both are small units, and both are priced at today’s crazy low market kind of prices – less than $80,000!  If you’d like details, let me know and I’ll be happy to email them to you and/or set up an appointment to see them.  Remember the first-time homebuyer $8,000 credit only applies if you buy a home and close on it by November 30th.

St. Petersburg High School at Mirror Lake

St. Petersburg High School postcard (click for larger view)

Continuing with my Back to School theme this week, today’s post is on St. Petersburg High School.  You may have noticed that the headline of the post refers to the ‘Million Dollar High School’.  That’s exactly how this new St. Petersburg High School was referenced when it was first constructed.  Many articles that I located in researching the school called it the ‘Million Dollar St. Petersburg High School’, and even the back of this post card has that name printed.

Although St. Petersburg High School was originally founded in 1898, the St. Pete High that we are all familiar with today was constructed in the 1920′s, during St. Petersburg’s boom years, and it opened to students in December of 1926. 

When it opened, the much anticipated new school received rave reviews, comparing the school’s facility and features to university campuses.  According to a history page on St. Pete High’s web site, local magazines and newspapers were ebullient in their praise.  Some quotes from that web page:  “The finest school building in the South … superb equipment and unique architecture … an enormous auditorium with a stage as large as those in the greatest theaters in the world, on which basketball contests may be staged … shower rooms, lockers not only in shower rooms but also individual … tennis courts, baseball diamonds, football gridiron … cafeteria for 1,200 … private waterworks … electric light plant, oil-burning boilers for heat … rambling Spanish architecture makes the three-story building look long, low, impressive … an inspiration to walk toward it … to see the sun on the red-tiled roof … inside, one is almost lost at first.”

St. Petersburg High, once known as St. Petersburg Central High School, is a historic landmark and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.  The architecture is another gorgeous example of the Mediterranean Revival style that was so popular in Florida and in St. Petersburg in the twenties.  The building is constructed of brick, hollow tile and poured concrete, and its construction quality and appearance rivals many of the finest hotels of the 1920′s.

In terms of academics, St. Pete High has both a strong regular academic program as well as the very first International Baccalaureate program in the state of Florida.  The IB program was introduced at St. Pete High in 1983, and it continues to thrive today, usually attracting more applicants than there are spaces available.  If you’re interested in learning more about the IB program, check out the  IB informational brochure.  

St. Pete High has a great history and is filled with tradition.  It’s a perfect example of what makes St. Petersburg such a unique place to live, work, go to school, and play.  If you’d like to drive by to see this beautiful building, it’s located at 2501 5th Avenue North.  For more information about St. Pete High, go to their web page.

St. Petersburg High School Today (click for larger view)