Assignment: St. Petersburg » Snell Isle

Coming Soon…?

Bob Horn — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:46:06 +0000

Signs of improvement in the world of St. Petersburg Real Estate continue to surface, sometimes without much fanfare, and sometimes with a bang! This empty corner lot on Snell Isle, directly across from Coffee Pot Bayou, is one such sign. The lot was apparently deemed to be more valuable than the old house that used to occupy it, so the old house has been torn down and something new and probably very grand is likely to be taking shape soon. The two lions on the corner seem undaunted by the disruption, readily accepting the change around them as they stand unaffected. I’ll keep an eye on this spot and will post again as things take shape!

St. Petersburg’s Logo Bird

Bob Horn — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:02:26 +0000

I knew, when I started this blog, that I would someday have to post a photograph of the ubiquitous Pelican! Not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s just that Pelicans are sometimes a little overdone in the tourist shops – Pelican t-shirts, Pelican postcards, Pelican cups, even Pelican poems:

A funny old bird is the Pelican
His bill can hold more than his belly can
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week
And I wonder, sometimes, how the Hell ‘e can…

Not my poem, but one that I first saw on a postcard when I was ten years old!

And, of course, the Pelican is the official symbol for the City of St. Petersburg, as you can see in the City logo that I’ve posted (with apologies to the City of St. Petersburg for absconding with their logo. If any city official objects, please contact me and I will remove it.)

But, all that said, the Pelican is a pretty unique bird, and they definitely own the waters near downtown St. Petersburg and much of the waterways around the city. And, while St. Petersburg residents have surely seen plenty of them, folks who don’t live around here might never have laid eyes on one, so a photo seems in order. This shot is pretty typical – they like to sit around on the pilings, catching a little sunshine, and just surveying the area around them. This was taken from Brightwaters Boulevard, on Snell Isle, and that’s Bird Island in the background.

Pelican Catching Some Sun (click on photo for larger image)

A Notch Above the Usual Street Sign

Bob Horn — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 02:02:18 +0000

Most incorporated cities have some sort of standard street sign that they use throughout the city to identify the names of the streets. St. Petersburg is certainly no exception. But in some areas of the city, the standard street signs are either replaced by or supplemented by something out of the ordinary.

Snell Isle, a beautiful area on Tampa Bay in Northeast St. Petersburg, is home to many absolutely gorgeous homes, some that are truly stunning. So it might not be unexpected that, in such an extraordinary neighborhood, one might find extraordinary street markers. This flower box/street marker is on the corner of Alora Street and Brightwaters Blvd NE. There are many more of these flower box/street markers in the area – a very nice touch of class that just adds some beauty, color, and flavor to the neighborhood. If you’re not familiar with the area, just take 22nd Avenue North from anywhere in the city. Go east just as far as you can go, and you’ll eventually end up at Coffee Pot Boulevard. Turn right one block to the Snell Isle bridge. Turn left, cross the bridge, then turn right on Brightwaters, and you can take a leisurely drive through an area of homes that make you feel as though you’ve slipped back into a bygone era… It makes a nice drive, if you just feel like getting out to see some pretty homes…

Alora Street (click on picture for larger image)

Snell Isle Bridge

Bob Horn — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:02:33 +0000

This is the Snell Isle Bridge as it looks today. Originally constructed in the late 1920′s, the bridge’s very existence is a testament to the power of women in early St. Petersburg’s history. C. Perry Snell, the St. Petersburg developer who built so many of the beautiful homes and developed so many of the beautiful neighborhoods in St. Petersburg, donated a gift of land on Snell Isle to the St. Petersburg Woman’s Club in 1928. The Club initially wasn’t sure that they wanted to accept the gift, because the land was across the water from the mainland, it was beyond the street car line, it was located in what was then a jungle, and the only means of access to it was via a very rickety wooden bridge. But the Woman’s Club did accept the gift for their new clubhouse, and they immediately began to push the City Council to tear down the old wooden bridge and construct a new, state of the art drawbridge over Coffee Pot Bayou. On Christmas Day 1931, the new $100,000 bridge was dedicated and opened to traffic. Somewhere in the 1940′s, the drawbridge stopped being opened on demand, but the mechanism stayed in place until 1995. In 1995, The City of St. Petersburg essentially rebuilt the bridge, keeping as close as possible to the original look and feel, restoring the original street lamps, but replacing the drawbridge with a fixed span. It’s a very picturesque, often photographed, and often painted landmark in St. Petersburg. You can find the bridge by heading east on 22nd Avenue North until the road ends at Coffee Pot Bayou, then turning right one block.

Snell Isle Bridge (click picture for larger image)