Oh Christmas Tree

A photograph of St. Petersburg's Christmas Tree going up in North Straub Park shortly after Thanksgiving this year, with the bay in the background:

Part of waterfront holiday decorations and celebrations that included a Glice skating rink.


Straub Park is named in honor of William L. Straub, the St. Petersburg Times editor who campaigned for public ownership of the waterfront. He endlessly promoted St. Petersburg and understood that an attractive waterfront would attract more tourists. Of the cities on the bay, with Tampa to the east, St. Petersburg to the west was the less industrial, the more reliant on tourist dollars. It was the "Sunshine City." In the 1910s and 1920s Straub pushed St. Petersburg's citizens and leaders to use urban planning and to invest public money in the environment to ensure the current and future prosperity of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County.

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Further reading:

St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950, by Raymond Arsenault (University Press of Florida 1999)

Visions of Eden: Environmentalism, Urban Planning, and City Building in St. Petersburg, Florida, 1900-1995, by R. Bruce Stephenson (Ohio State University Press 1997)

Merry Christmas

Art Deco in Miami Beach

Here is a video from the Miami Design Preservation League featuring the Miami Beach's art Deco district: Saving Art Deco.

Churches on Scott Street in Tampa

Once upon a time Scott Street was in the middle of Tampa's Central Avenue District, which was the core of the city's African American community. Today the brick street rumbles by mostly vacant, fenced lots, where the Central Park Village public housing stood from 1954 until 2007.

But, as blue as the sky, still stands the Paradise Missionary Baptist Church. Built in the early twentieth century as the Allen Temple A.M.E. Church, this church now also houses a museum dedicated to the community it served. Just a few doors further down the street is the red brick Ebenezer M.B. Church, which when built in 1922 served Tampa's first African-American Seventh-Day Adventist congregation.

Paradise Missionary Baptist Church, as it appears today:

1926 photograph of the Allen Temple AME Church (courtesy USF Libraries):

Ebenezer M.B. Church on Scott Street:

Further Reading:

Tampa's "Central Avenue Remembered" by James Tokley (video)

"Central Park Village Demolished," Tampa Tribune, July 31, 2007

"Plans for Perry Harvey Sr. Park in Tampa Go Nowhere," St. Petersburg Times, December 12, 2008

"Displacement and Deconcentration in Tampa" Anthropology News, Dec. 2008

A Guide to Historic Tampa, by Steve Ratjar (The History Press, 2007)

Images of Hialeah

Recent slideshow/video of Hialeah Park:

Congratulations and Best Wishes

Florida's governor Charlie Crist is getting married today at St. Petersburg's First United Methodist Church. He is the third governor of this state to marry while in office in the past 100 years.

In June 1949, Fuller Warren and Barbara Manning were married at a private home in Los Angeles.



















In February 1967 Claude Kirk and Erika Mattfield were married at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach.
















Best wishes and congratulations to the bride and groom!

(Photos from the Florida State Archives)

Story Corps Coming to Ybor City

NPR's Story Corps is coming to Ybor City to record oral histories with local residents.

"StoryCorps To Collect Interviews In Tampa" (Tampa Tribune, December 11, 2008)


Oral history projects have been completed in Ybor City before, beginning in the 1930s when the WPA recorded stories and life histories of cigar workers.

Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942

American Bungalow in Seminole Heights

Tampa's Seminole Heights neighborhood was recently featured in American Bungalow magazine. Here is a link to the article: Seminole Heights.

Taft Richardson, Jr.

Folk artist Taft Richardson, Jr., known for his community service as well as his sculptures made from animal bones, passed away in Tampa earlier this week. Spirituality infused his work, which is well illustrated by this website by Folkvine.


Further reading:

"Taft Richardson Jr.: Bones spoke to artist " (St. Petersburg Times, December 3, 2008)

"Bones of invention" (by Jeff Klinkenberg, St. Petersburg Times, August 13, 2006)


From the library:

Extraordinary Interpretations: Florida's Self-Taught Artists (by Gary Monroe, University Press of Florida, 2003)

Just Above the Water: Florida Folk Art (by Kristin G. Congdon and Tina Bucuvalas, University Press of Mississippi, 2006)

Vacation Photos

Really, nothing to do with Florida, but here are some pictures from a recent trip to Chicago.

Calder's Flamingo reflected in Mies van der Rohe's Loop Station post office
















Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House














The Rookery Building















Sears Tower




















The house in LaGrange where David Hasselhoff lived when he was in high school

Places To Go, People To See

The Florida Humanities Council sponsors events statewide and year round presenting Florida culture and arts. For example, on December 4, Robert Wrigley and Campbell McGrath will be reading and discussing their work at FIU's Biscayne Bay Campus in North Miami.

For a calendar of events, go to the Florida Humanities Council's website.

Temple Terrace Holiday Tour of Homes

Next Saturday, December 6 (10 am to 2 pm) is the Temple Terrace Historic Homes Tour, presented by the Temple Terrace Preservation Society. The tour begins and ends at the 1920s Club Morocco Casino (now the Florida College Student Center, see map), and features four 1920s Mediterranean Revival houses and four 1950s - 1960s Mid Century Modern houses.

History of Temple Terrace

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photographs from the Florida State Archives:

Underwater Thanksgiving at Rainbow Springs (1953)

Governor Collins' daughter Darby with Thanksgiving turkey at mansion (1959)

St. Petersburg's Pier

Then

(Florida State Archives)

Now















History of The Pier

Hot War to Hot Dogs

Just to the east of Busch Gardens' parking lot in Tampa stands Mel's Hot Dogs, since 1973. The restaurant also happens to be in the last remaining building from the World War II training base, Henderson Field. The former Army air field land is now part of Busch Gardens, a brewery, and the University of South Florida. Traces of the runways can still be found, and in 2000, construction crews at the university found a rusty practice bomb.

Florida in Life

Google recently added a way to search old Life magazine photographs: Life photo archives.

Some examples of Florida photographs found this way. . . .

Soldiers at mailcall outside the Breakwater Hotel, Miami Beach, 1942

Dwight D. Eisenhower's arrival in Key West in a lemon-colored Cadillac, December 1955

Upside-down house, 1960

Nixon and the balloon drop, GOP Convention, Miami Beach, 1968

Architect Eliot Noyes and interior decorator Kathryn Smallen on terrace of bubble house at Hobe Sound, Florida, 1954

Road Trip to (Off) Broadway?

"After Years, Sondheim's 'Road Show' Pulls Into N.Y." - National Public Radio: "Addison Mizner was an architect who helped create Florida's Palm Beach. His brother, Wilson, was a larger-than-life character: a cocaine-addicted gambler who managed prizefighters, collaborated on Broadway plays, and got involved in all sorts of illegal schemes, including swindling his own wife."

More about Mizner:

"Architect Addison Mizner: Villain or Visionary?" (Herald-Tribune, Jan. 27, 2008)

"Mizner's Dream" (Boca Raton's History)

Polynesian Putter

The other evening we played a round. Polynesian Putter is a 1970s mini golf course on St. Pete Beach that features a large tiki head with glowing blue eyes. Three years ago it was chosen as the area's "Best Putt-Putt," and I don't think much has changed since then. It's basic, many of the course obstacles are actually garden statuary, but if you just want a relaxed way to pass an hour with family or friends, it's just the thing.

Founded in 1972, Polynesian Putter is a Treasure Island survivor. The tiki head on the course is echoed by a tiki head on the score card, although some have pointed out that the tiki head on the score card was actually at Tiki Gardens. Tiki Gardens was a Hawaiian-themed resort down the road, which is now a local beach access.































The hole under the snake forks, and you have to choose which way to go.

Citrus Park School - 1911

In September I posted a photograph of the Citrus Park Colored School, which raised a question about another one-room school in Citrus Park. Finally, I stopped and took a picture of that one as well.

The Citrus Park school was built in 1911, and served all grades in a single room until the 1920s, when a divider was added to make it into two rooms. In the 1920s, a new brick school was built; this brick building is still part of today's Citrus Park Elementary. The wooden schoolhouse, which was originally white rather than red, continued to serve the school and community as lunchroom, church, and classroom. As Citrus Park grew, particularly after World War II, more classrooms were added to the school, but the old schoolhouse remained.

The Old Citrus Park School is a Hillsborough County Historic Landmark, as it may be the oldest standing school building in the county.

The Citrus Park Elementary School campus is rather a hodge-podge of architectural styles, the latest addition being in the current decade. Northwest Hillsborough County has grown rapidly in the past ten years, and finding classrooms for all the kids has greatly challenged the local school board.

Florida National Cemetery

Florida National Cemetery

Veterans Day Homepage

A Little Comfort in St. Petersburg

Tucked between the Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of History near St. Petersburg's Pier is this comfort station. "Comfort station" is a fairly outdated term for public restroom.













This particular comfort station is architect-designed, in the Romanesque Revival style (it's a City of St. Petersburg historic landmark). Today it may seem odd to have a pretty public restroom, especially one right on the waterfront in the midst of museums and tourist attractions. But in the early twentieth century, public facilities showed that a city was progressive, clean, safe. Tourism was very important in St. Petersburg in the 1920s, and while no one was not going to come visit because of the restrooms, having a nice comfort station didn't hurt.

The architect of this little gem was Henry Taylor, who designed many of St. Pete's finest buildings, including the Vinoy hotel and St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Church. The remarkable similarity between the later and the comfort station has fed local urban lore, that the church didn't pay Taylor for his work, and in retribution he used the design to build a restroom. However, it seems this story is a case of fiction stranger than fact, based on construction dates and Taylor's wife. It may be more difficult to prove or disprove stories that the comfort station is haunted by a woman named Agnes.

Lorenzo Dow Ross

Beside the winding road leading to the Weedon Island Preserve are two grave markers partially surrounded by a short, white picket fence. There's space for a car to pull over safely, and a interpretive sign to read as well.














Here are the graves of Lorenzo Dow Ross and his eldest son Percy. Lorenzo was born in 1836 in what became Tampa. A local boy, he fought in Florida's Indian wars and joined the Confederate Seventh Florida Infantry during the Civil War. After nearly two years as a prisoner of war in Tennessee, he came home to Ross Island, now part of the Weedon Island Preserve. Bad food killed Lorenzo in 1889, bad hunting killed Percy in 1886, and they came to be buried side by side.

Lorenzo and Percy Ross' tombstones have had some adventures, which you can read about in these articles from the St. Petersburg Times:

"Marking Time" (Dec. 10, 2006)

"The history behind one Floridian's headstone" (Sept. 19, 1998)

Christopher Still at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art

"Coming Home," through January 25 at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, chronicles 30 years of artist Christopher Still's career. The title refers in part to Still's longtime connections to the museum and Pinellas County.

"Exhibit tracks evolution of artist Christopher Still" (St. Petersburg Times, October 26, 2008)

Christopher Still's murals in the House Chamber at the Florida State Capital

Power

In 1955 Florida Power Corporation bought the northern part of Weedon Island and built a power plant there. The power plant property includes some of the prehistoric mounds, the former Weedon house site, and a 1930s movie studio. The power company used the movie studio as a warehouse until it burned in 1963. The power plant is now Progress Energy's Bartow Power Plant.

Here's a glimpse of the power plant through the mangroves along Gandy Boulevard:

If you were to take a few steps further towards the water and look to the east across Old Tampa Bay, you'd see the Interbay Peninsula, home to South Tampa, Port Tampa, and MacDill Air Force Base.

Squint a bit, and you'll see a very large airplane landing at MacDill AFB.

Today MacDill Air Force Base is home to the 6th Air Mobility Wing, U.S. Central Command, and the headquarters of the U.S. Special Operations Command, along with 51 other Mission Partners. Nearly seventy years ago it was a brand new base, training pilots for World War II. Base commander on December 7, 1941, was General Clarence Tinker, also known as the first Native American to become a Major General in the United States Army. Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma was named in his honor.

Happy Birthday, Teddy!

Officers of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment in Tampa, Florida, in 1898. From left to right: Major George Dunn, Major Alexander Brodie, Major General Joseph Wheeler, Chaplain Henry A. Brown, Colonel Leonard Wood, and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. (Photograph courtesy Florida State Archives)

Theodore Rossevelt was born in New York on October 27, 1858, which means that today is his 150th birthday!

A few years before he became the 26th president of the United States, Roosevelt spent a little time in Tampa with his Rough Riders, the men of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. The year was 1898 and the United States was at war with Spain. Tampa served as the point of embarkation, meaning that troops and supplies headed to Cuba passed through the city's ports. Tampa was still a small town, and the military logistics got gummed up, so there was time for Roosevelt to have dinner in Ybor City.

The Library of Congress website includes digital files of motion pictures taken of Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in Tampa.

Historians are rather like pack rats...

"We’ve Got the Biscuit; You Bring the Gravy" from Digital Library Center Blog

Links on the Side

I've added a new sidebar section (on the right hand side, scroll down) with links to research resources. Here you can find digital books, maps, photographs, library catalogs, journals, and other materials that I have found useful. If you have a favorite research link that isn't listed here, please share it! If you know of a blog that would be a good addition to the blogrolls on the sidebars, please share that, too!

Grand Central Airport

In 1929 Fred V. Blair built Grand Central Airport on Weedon Island. In 1931, Eastern Air Transport began flights from this airport, with service to Daytona Beach on Curtiss Kingbirds, and service to New York on Curtiss Condors. The airport closed in the late 1940s, but the remains of the terminal and control tower building are still visible next to Weedon Island Preserve's parking lot.

Building the airport required clearing and leveling large portions of the island. Over the past 60 years gopher tortoises have worked hard to convert the former runway into scrub.















For more information: Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields: Florida: Southern Tampa Area. Includes photos and aerial views of Grand Central Airport.

Weeden Island Preserve Fieldtrip

This week I took my class to the Weedon Island Preserve in St. Petersburg. The class is a seminar, an interdisciplinary overview of the Humanities with Florida as a unifying theme. My students are freshmen in the University Honors program at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg. This fieldtrip to Weedon Island was a chance to escape the classroom for an afternoon, and a chance to visit a place that is both a valuable natural resource and a valuable cultural resource. The Preserve is managed by Pinellas County Parks, and offers nature trails, interpretative exhibits, historic sites, Indian mounds, kayaking, birdwatching, educational programs, and more.

The design on the exterior of the museum is inspired by a prehistoric culture that flourished here a couple of thousand years ago, the Weeden Island culture, known for its elaborate pottery. This particular pattern would be Weeden Island Punctate, basically made by poking wet clay with the end of a reed or stem. The Weeden Island culture was found along the gulf coast from Tampa Bay northward and westward into southern Georgia and Alabama.

Jesse Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution named the site and the culture in the 1920s when he excavated the site. He was also, unfortunately, responsible for a spelling error. Archaeologists refer to the Weeden Island culture and the Weeden Island site, and Weeden Island pottery. That's Weeden with three e's. But the name of the island is actually Weedon Island, with two e's and one o. Technically speaking, the island's name originally was Weedon's Island, with a possessive apostrophe s. In the 1890s the island was a wedding present to Blanche Henderson and Leslie Weedon, a Tampa physician. The couple and their family used the island as a weekend retreat. A twist to the story is that Leslie Weedon was the grandson of Frederick Weedon, known to historians as the doctor to Osceola while the Seminole leader was imprisioned in St. Augustine. When Osceola died, Dr. F. Weedon prepared his body for burial, but for some reason kept Osceola's head separate.

Further Reading: The Weedon Island Story (pdf)

Florida News Stories

"Swamp Buggy fever...No antidote!" (Marco Eagle, October 19, 2008) "It was pure muck after the potatoes were dug up, perfect!"

"Using old curbs, Trilby house rises piece by piece " (St. Petersburg Times, October 20, 2008) "The Tudor-style stone cottage nestled on a bluff on a bend in the Withlacoochee River looks like something straight out of Harry Potter. With its English garden, tower, sun-faded blue columns and heavy front door handmade from 1,000-year-old pecky cypress hauled a century ago from a Florida swamp...."

"Woman returns to Breakers 65 years after her birth there" (Palm Beach Post, October 7, 2008)
"The Breakers 'a different world' for mom who gave birth there 65 years ago" (Sun Sentinel, October 8, 2008)

"Biscayne National Park celebrates 40 years" (Miami Herald, October 12, 2008)

"Distant Shores" (Biscayne Times) "Biscayne Bay may be our area’s most prominent feature, but just try getting close to it."

Nature Photos from Pasco County

Here are a few photographs from a recent visit to Key Vista Environmental Park and the Anclote Gulf Park, including (in no particular order) an anhinga, pine trees, a brown pelican, a jellyfish, a pipefish, a fiddler crab, blazing star, and birds on powerlines.

Marjorie's Outhouse

"The outhouse . . . stood on a direct line with the dining room windows. One fortunate diner might sit with his back to it. The others could not lift their eyes from their plates without meeting the wooden stare of the unhappy and misplaced edifice. They were fortunate if they did not meet as well the eye of a belated occupant, assuring himself stonily that he could not be seen." (from "The Evolution of Comfort," in Cross Creek, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings [Charles Scribner's Sons, 1942])

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park preserves or recreates Rawlings' house down to the minute details, including the gray paint on the screen door of the outhouse, intended to shield the user from view, but rather giving that unfortunate the appearance of a gray, mossy monster. There's even a red cloth flag, a system worked out by one of Rawling's guests to indicate when the outhouse was occupied. In Cross Creek, Rawlings recounts how she vowed to use any windfalls of money to pay for indoor plumbing, being disatisfied with the outhouse as well as icy outdoor showers in the wintertime. With the $700 she earned for Jacob's Ladder, she was able to install a bathroom: "The formal opening of the bathroom was a gala social event, with a tray of glasses across the lavatory, ice and soda in the bathtub, and a bouquet of roses . . . ."

Although Rawlings did acknowledge that she was better off at her house than were many of her neighbors when it came to water, her desire for convenience and comfort are echoed by Ma Baxter's wish for a well in The Yearling. And as Rawlings had to postpone her bathroom to pay for mortgages, car repairs, and poor citrus crops, so did Ma Baxter have to wait for her well:

"Ever' spring, I'd figger to git your Ma a well dug. Then I'd need a ox, or the cow'd bog down and perish, or one o' the young uns'd put in and die and I'd have no heart for well-diggin', and medicine to pay for. Bricks so turrible high--When I begun diggin' oncet, and got no water at thirty feet, I knowed I was in for it. But twenty years is too long to ask ary woman to do her washin' on a seepage hillside." (Penny Baxter to his son Jody, in The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)

_________________

Further reading about outhouses:

"Honor has outhouse restorer over the moon: Historic latrine in Cocoa to be rebuilt near church" Florida Today, September 6, 2008

"Bushnell man finds opportunity in outhouses " St. Petersburg Times, September 21, 2008

Florida Outhouses, by Kevin McCarthy, 2002

Nature Calls: The History, Lore, and Charm of Outhouses, by Dottie Booth, 1998

Eatonville, a Town in the Southern-most State

The New York Times has been running a series of articles about the state guides published in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration. This week they visited Eatonville, a small town in central Florida. Eatonville is the oldest incorporated African-American municipality in the United States, and was the childhood home of Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote the town's entry in the Florida guide.

"In a Town Apart, the Pride and Trials of Black Life" New York Times, September 28, 2008

Florida; a Guide to the Southern-most State (Federal Writers' Project, 1939)

The WPA Guides: Mapping America, by Christine Bold (University Press of Mississippi, 1999)

Pygmy Rattlesnake

A couple of weeks ago I pulled into my mother's driveway and noticed something laying on the concrete. At first I thought it was a unusually large earthworm, then perhaps a young snake. Carefully, I gave the snake a nudge with a stick, and indeed, it was deceased. Perhaps a lawnmower encounter. Not long ago we'd had to gently eject a young black racer the cat brought into our breakfast nook, but this driveway snake had spots, so that wasn't it.

Since the snake wasn't hurting anything, the question of its parentage became a mystery deferred. Until this week when Eva at The Flying Mullet wrote about her first encounter with a pygmy rattlesnake. Fortunately -for the snake - her story had a better ending.

Happy Birthday, John Gorrie

Dr. John Gorrie, inventor of the first air conditioning machine, would have been 206 years old today. For his contributions to medicine and making life in the South bearable, he has a state park and two schools (one in Jacksonville and one in Tampa) named after him. A statue of Dr. Gorrie represents Florida in Washington D.C. as part of the National Statuary Hall.

"Improved Process for the Artificial Production of Ice" U.S. Patent Number 8080, issued May 6, 1851

Paynes Prairie

I moved to Florida after what had been up to then a lifetime of living in Texas. The shift from the big city of Dallas to the much smaller city of Gainesville was abrupt in many ways, but one of the most unexpected adjustments to be made was to get used to the trees that are EVERYWHERE! I couldn't see anything. Out West, if you're driving along the highway, you can see houses and farms and towns way before you get there. In the East, houses and farms and towns tend to be surprises because of all the vegetation shielding them from view. Within a few weeks at UF, I felt claustrophobic while outdoors. Until one afternoon when I went for a drive south of town and all that foliage parted and I emerged onto Paynes Prairie.

What a relief it was to see the horizon again!

My undergraduate botany and ecology courses in Texas focused on tall grass prairies rather than wet prairies, so it was bewildering to walk along the boardwalk into the prairie and be over water and amongst non-grassy plants. Spotting a herd of buffalo heightened this sense of being out of synch with time and space. Nevertheless, over the next several years, the prairie gave me a place to exhale.

Good thing I didn't live there when it was all one big lake.

For more information about Paynes Prairie:

Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park

Paynes Prairie: The Great Savanna, A History and Guide, by Lars Andersen (Pineapple Press, 2003)

Friends of Paynes Prairie

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Florida's larger-than-life 19th governor, died on this date in 1910. He is still remembered for his efforts to drain the Everglades, a task which had daunted many a prior titan. However, as he saw it, man could conquer nature, for after all, "Water will run downhill!"

"Napoleon of the Everglades," by Gary Mormino, Tampa Tribune September 14, 2008

For further reading:

Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, Florida's Fighting Democrat, by Samuel Proctor (1950, reprinted 1993 by the University Press of Florida)

The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise, by Michael Grunwald (2007, Simon and Schuster)

Gainesville's Courthouse Square

You can still discern the outline of a courthouse square in downtown Gainesville, although the original Alachua County courthouse is no longer there. Brick store front face inward toward the courthouse, with on-street parking. The county building currently on the site of the old court house was built in 1958 is a modern-style structure, against which the Confederate memorial looks incongruous.

Alfred Browning Parker

The University of Florida is celebrating the life and continuing career of Alfred Browning Parker, noted for his Tropical Modern architecture. The exhibit "Of the Master's Hand" will be on display at the Reitz Union on the UF cumpus through October 3, followed by the exhibit "Promises of Paradise: Staging Mid-Century Miami" opening at the Harn Museum on October 11.

Alfred Browning Parker website: http://www.alfredbparker.com/home.html

"The Master of Coconut Grove": Article in Summer 2008 issue of Modernism magazine (free registration required)

"UF names endowment after alumnus, renowned Miami architect" (InsideUF, Sept. 17, 2008)

House du Rivage: a film maker looks at her experience of living in an Alfred Browing Parker house, and expands into an examination of the role architecture plays in our lives.

"Architect Teaches 'Green' Techniques: A 1940''s Architect Continues To Make 'Miami Modern Homes' Using 'Green'" with video clip

DOCOMOMO/US Florida

The Country Club at Snell Isle

Now part of the Renaissance Vinoy Gulf Club in St. Petersburg, this building used to be the Snell Isle Golf Club or the Sunset Country Club. It was built in the 1920s by C. Perry Snell. Snell started out as a pharmacist from Kentucky, then married well and came to St. Petersburg for a honeymoon. He ended up as one of the city's most prominent Boom Time developers. Snell Isle was built in the mid 1920s as an upscale development. Like so many other Florida developers, the end of the Boom hit Snell hard, but he perserved to finish Snell Isle. He enjoyed travel and collecting art work, some of which he incorporated into developments and buildings. The panther street signs in Snell Isle have an European heritage.



















(My Florida History - Old Houses on Campus included one of Snell's homes in St. Petersburg.)