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.

But, while they were viable, they had showrooms,  just like other major auto companies all around the country, and St. Petersburg was home to one of them.  There was a Studebaker showroom built on the Southeast corner of 4th Street and 6th Avenue South by the Peninsular Motor Company in 1925, and when the showroom opened, the St. Petersburg dealership was the fourth largest Studebaker dealer in the world!  However, only one year later, Peninsular went out of business, and the showroom closed.  After closing, the building was used for many other purposes over the years. 

In July, 1985, the building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.  A few years later, in 1989, the United States Geological Survey moved into the building, and soon thereafter, they began a major project in which the building was completely restored and renovated.  In 1990, USGS won an award for outstanding achievement in renovation/restoration of a non-residential structure.  The building is still alive and well today, still home to the USGS.  It’s a beautiful red brick, Tudor Revival style structure, and it looks much as it did when it was first constructed.  The Studebaker signs are showing their years of wear, but if you look at the second picture below and click the photo to see the full-sized image, you can still make out the letters and see the logo, pretty much an exact replica of the logo that I’m showing in the top right corner of this post.

Studebaker Building (click on photo for larger image)

Studebaker Sign (click on photo for larger image)

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

Crislip Arcade Facade (click for full size image)

It wasn’t always this way.  The Crislip Arcade, once one of ten arcade style shopping areas in downtown St. Petersburg, was built in 1926 during the boom years for St. Petersburg construction.  (See my Snell Arcade  post from August 7th.)  The arcade style of shops was the 1920′s version of today’s shopping mall.  By using the ‘walk through’ concept, many store fronts could exist in a place where only a few could actually face onto the main road.  The Crislip Arcade, in the middle of the 600 block, was designed by St. Petersburg architect Edgar Ferdon, a man who can be found all over the Internet for having designed beautiful buildings in the early 1900′s, many of which survive today.  The Arcade itself is built in the Masonry Vernacular style, which was prevalent between 1900 and 1930.  Characteristics of this style include a regular/rectangular floor plan, a continous or slab foundation, either one or two stories tall.  The primary exterior building material was brick, stucco, or rough texture, roof type was usually flat with parapets, and ornamentation was normally kept simple.

Although the Crislip Arcade and the shops on either side of it housed viable businesses for decades, since 2006 the entire block has been a wasteland of empty shops.  The arcade style of shops has gone largely out of favor as businesses moved into malls and newer upscale shopping developments.  (For an interesting look back in time, check out this article from the June 16, 1974 issue of the St. Petersburg Times on ”The Vanishing Arcade“).    The storefronts have sometimes been used as sleeping quarters for those with nowhere else to sleep, and people  with businesses across the street and in nearby areas have seen their business hurt by the long dormant shops.  Rather than allow the empty shops to continue to deteriorate, a grand plan has come together that involves the property owner,  a core of dedicated volunteers who are driving the plan, a larger group of volunteers who have freely given their time and work, the administration of the City of St. Petersburg,  and a large number of local artists who love the idea of using these spaces for studios and/or galleries.

Ad from The Evening Independent Oct 25, 1938

The plan is essentially this:  The owner of the property and shops has agreed to rent all of the shops in the area to local artists at a very reasonable rate.  For their part, the volunteers and the artist/tenants will take care of necessary renovations before moving into the spaces.  The volunteers driving this project hosted a major cleanup effort back in July that attracted more than 70 people to help clear out and clean up the shop spaces. 

This morning, there was a big sidewalk sale held in the 600 block of Central, where everything that was still in the shops was sold to the public.  I saw display fixtures, furniture, antiques, lamps, fans, an old drill press, and hundreds of other items that were up for grabs.  Most items were sold on a ‘make me an offer’ basis.  All of the money taken in from the sale is going back into the project to help prepare the shops for their use as artist spaces. (And, yes, I did come home with a great old GE oscillating stand fan that cost me five bucks – needs a little cleanup, but I can use it in my garage and it’s a fun souvenir of times gone by!)

Sidewalk Sale

Looking for Bargains

With no crystal ball to predict how quickly the economy and real estate values will recover, we know that, for awhile, at least, the 600 block of Central Avenue and the old Crislip Arcade are going to come alive again.  There are 35 spaces to rent and there are over 60 artists who want to rent there, so before long, we should  have a very active and exciting artist colony taking root on Central Avenue.  Over the next couple of months, work will continue on these spaces and when I hear about a grand opening of any sort, I’ll get some more photographs and will be sure to post about it.  In the meantime, if you’re in the area, keep your eyes open and you should see things progressing!

Snell Arcade

Arcade View

If this doesn’t strike you as a gorgeous building, then I’m going to guess that nothing will!  You’re looking at the Snell Arcade, also known by some as the Rutland Building, at the corner of Central Avenue and 4th Street in Downtown St. Petersburg.  As you might guess by the name, this building was a creation of C. Perry Snell, one of the most prolific developers of boomtime St. Petersburg and certainly one with a flair for style!  Built during the twenties, it’s called an Arcade because, at the street level, there is a walk-through arcade that allows open access from one side of the building to another, and there are individual shop entrances inside that arcade.  During the decade of the 1920′s, there were ten of these popular arcade-style buildings constructed, though only three of them remain standing in 2009. 

The Snell Arcade is another wonderful example of the Meditteranean Revival architecture that is seen throughout St. Petersburg, although it has some Gothic additions and some Perry Snell original touches, too.  I won’t go into an in-depth description, because you can read about it, along with a nicely detailed history of the building, at the Snell Arcade web site.  There are some excellent photographs there, and an interesting explanation of what was discovered during the restoration of the building. The ‘Rutland Building’ name came about because Hubert Rutland, a banking king in St. Petersburg for decades, fell in love with the building and purchased it in 1943.  Long time residents of St. Petersburg might even remember the Rutland’s Men’s Store that was located at the street level of this building for many years.

Currently, the Snell Arcade has a number of businesses at the street level, and the rest of the building has been restored and turned into unique residential condominiums.

Snell Arcade - Top of Building