ST PETERSBURG FLORIDA: JEWEL IN THE MUCK OF ‘VACATION LAND’

powdery white sand and sweeping views at St Pete Beach

Gorgeous white sands of St Pete Beach

ST PETERSBURG FLORIDA: JEWEL IN THE MUCK OF ‘VACATION LAND’

Amidst the vast sprawl of Florida ‘Vacation Land’ with its unending miles of hotel-backed beaches jammed with vacationers, gaudy amusement parks, and assorted tinsely tourist attractions, stands a charming city with much more depth. St. Petersburg, Florida is bursting with art, culture, historic buildings and neighborhoods, markets and some quirky unique past times.

Don Cesare Resort at St Pete Beach

Don Cesare Hotel at St Pete Beach

I must admit it wasn’t always this way for St Pete, as I discovered during the St Petersburg Preservation Society’s weekly Saturday Walking Tours. St Pete was actually founded in the late 1800s as THE original Florida ‘Vacation Land’. Conceived and promoted by 3 key Florida land owners, St Pete was dubbed ‘Health City’ and a railroad installed to ship people in.

Their scheme worked. The land developers quickly built heaps of hotels, cafeterias, movie theaters and churches to accommodate the masses of Americans flocking to St Pete’s sun, sea and warmth.

Over the decades more and more elderly people made their way to St Pete’s wonderfully warm, healthy environment. So many that in the 1970s St Pete became the brunt of various national jokes. It was referred to as the city of  “the newlyweds and nearly deads” and the place “where retired people go to visit their parents.”

Oh, dear, not good for commerce! During the following 2 decades, St Pete became pretty much a ghost town.

Stetson School of Law

Stetson School of Law, originally Ragayt Hotel, St Petersburg

In recent years, among other things, St Pete has been dubbed America’s #1 mid-sized-city ‘Top Art Destination 2010’. It is home to several world-class museums including the important Dali Museum and Chihuly Glass Collection.

It offers the largest produce market in the US southeast, every Saturday. It has many important registered historic buildings, neighborhoods and districts.

It’s home to the world’s largest shuffleboard club. Has the country’s only lawn bowling bowl testing center.  Has one of only two post offices in the States delivering mail by bicycle. And offers other quirky charms. Let’s take a look at some of them:

st petersburg-florida

shop signs at St Pete art district

For several years running St Pete has been listed among the Top 25 Arts Destinations of mid-sized cities in the USA by American Style Magazine. In 2010 St Pete took 1^st place! In 2011 the city’s hoping for a repeat. This designation is a result of St Pete’s amazing diversity of arts.

Ceramics at Craftsman House

In addition to boasting 4 world class museums, St Pete has a burgeoning and diverse local arts community. Several blocks of Central Avenue in downtown St Pete are filled with painting galleries, craft shops, ceramic shops and even an art school.

Further out along Central Avenue are 2 more blocks of art galleries, antique shops and boutique cafes.

Several art organizations work actively to promote galleries, arts and artists including St Petersburg Art Alliance, Florida Craftsmen Inc, The Morean Arts’ Center, The Dazzio Art Experience and the Craftsman House.

Every second Saturday evening is ‘Gallery Walk’ when downtown art shops stay open late to receive packs of art lovers browsing the neighborhood.

Saturday Morning Market, downtown St Pete

SATURDAY MORNING MARKETS SaturdayMorningMarkets.com

St Pete’s Saturday morning market, right along the waterfront in downtown St Pete, gets bustling early with organic vegetable stalls, homemade pastry and coffee shops, tropical plant nurseries and an array of artists’ stalls and ethnic clothing.

As the market gets underway, dozens of ethnic food and homemade gourmet food stalls open. People start flooding in. Round about 11 am a band begins playing in the middle of the market to entertain the guests. It’s a lively, festive, cultural experience.

Band and enthusiastic dancer at St Pete Saturday Morning Market

St Pete’s market is unique in the US on many counts.

It’s the largest market in the southeast. It’s the only market with a seating area and a band in the middle of the market.

It’s the only city market run privately instead of municipally. It has the largest selection of ethnic foods and largest variety of arts n crafts. Most of all, it’s a fun venue with a sense of community among both vendors and visitors. Not bad St Pete!

ALBERT WHITTED AIRPORT: Albert Witted Airport

Whoever heard of an airport IN DOWNTOWN? Well, ST Pete has one! It’s the Albert Whitted Airport. The runway sits right on the Tampa Bay waterfront. The small city-owned and operated airport shares its waterside home with the Dali Museum and the St Pete municipal marina.

planes at Albert Witted Airport, St Pete

Besides use for private planes, the airport offers flight instruction, plane storage and parking, fueling, and other flight services. Several important life-saving organizations also use the airport.

The Dali, St Petersburg

DALI MUSEUM TheDali

The new Dali Museum opened it’s doors on Jan 11, 2011, with a creative big-bang opening ceremony.

Prior to its new location on St Pete’s waterfront, the Dali Museum had already been in St Pete since 1979, located just 3 blocks away. The new museum’s fabulous architecture adds extra dazzle to Dali’s amazing paintings.

art store at Dali Museum

According to the museum’s guest surveys nearly 50% of all guests visit St Pete primarily to visit this astounding collection of Salvador Dali’s works. For more info read about my recent visit to the Dali.

Dale Chihuly Float Boat, 2010 3 x 4½ x 12’ Chihuly Collection presented by Morean Arts Center St. Petersburg, FL Photo by Terry Rishel

CHIHULY GLASS COLLECTION Chihuly Collection

The Chihuly Collection, presented by the Morean Arts’ Center, opened in July, 2010. Inside are 16 astounding installations by Dale Chihuly of Washington state. Mr Chihuly is credited as completely transforming the glass arts, even so far as to have influenced the world of art in general. His glass installations are found internationally in 4 countries as well as all over the USA.

I recently visited the Chihuly Collection in St Pete and was simply blown away. To learn more about what you’ll experiencet here, read my take on the Collection, complete with professional photos of the Chihuly installations from the Collection’s press kit.

St Petersburg Shuffleboard Club

SHUFFLEBOARD CAPITAL OF THE WORLDSt Pete Shuffle

Ever heard of shuffleboard? It’s a little-known outdoor leisure game along the lines of croquet, lawn bowling and bowling. And St Pete is the Shuffleboard capital of the world!

Shuffleboard is played on a long narrow shuffleboard court by 2 or 4 players who slide hockey-puck-like discs down the court aiming to land in the scoring area at the far end of the court. The objective is to earn 75 points before your opponent.

Shuffleboard requires both skill and strategy. Players must learn the proper pushing strength and aim to place their pucks on the point zones or knock out their opponents’ pucks.

St Petersburg courts on Friday evening

St Pete Lawn Bowling Club

LAWN BOWLINGSt Petersburg Lawn Bowling Club

 

If shuffleboard doesn’t catch your attention, how about lawn bowling? Another long-term St Pete pastime, it got rolling in 1916 by an American and two Canadians. Currently the St Pete Lawn Bowling Club includes members from the US, Canada, Scotland and Germany.

Lawn bowling is also played on outdoor courts, but with ‘bowls’ instead of pucks. They’re not ‘balls’ I was informed because they’re not round but rather shaped like flattened balls with one side weighted. The weighting causes the bowls to curve when they’re rolled, making the players’ aim more difficult.

In lawn bowling, players roll the bowls in a curved arch down the court trying to get as close to a white marker as possible. As in shuffleboard, part of the strategy entails knocking opponents bowls out of the way. Teams play 12 rounds, or ‘ends’ as they’re called, and tally up total points from all 12 segments to find the winners.

Club members playing lawn bowling

St Petersburg open-air post office

St Pete’s post office is listed on the National Registry of Historic Buildings. Built in 1916 to imitate the architecture of a hospital in Italy, the beautiful building showcases many intricate details no longer found on government buildings, including curved archways, American eagle carvings, and rows of brass postal boxes.This post office is unique on two other counts as well:

1. It’s America’s first open-air post office, open-air meaning the post boxes are located outside. Box owners can access their mail any time of day or night. Handy!

Johan, one of St Pete’s cycling postmen

House in North Shores District, now a B n B

HISTORIC HOUSES DISTRICTSSt Pete Preservation

St Pete is full of beautiful historic churches, houses, hotels, arcades and other buildings. In addition, it even boasts entire historic districts full of old early-20^th century homes. The two most acknowledged and famous neighborhoods are the North Shore District and the Kenwood District.

The North Shore neighborhood is full of large, often landscaped homes that were originally situated  right on the beachfront. The beach has since been moved 2 blocks away, thanks to land reclamation, but the grand houses still remain.

Kenwood holds the largest collection of ‘bungalow’ style houses in the USA. ‘Bungalow’ houses come in many different styles including Mediterranean, ‘airplane’, and Craftsman.

What distinguishes them, among other things, are their front porches with columns, wide overhanging roofs, and often a set-back upper story. The neighborhood also boasts brick streets, granite curbs and hexagonal sidewalks. This area was St Pete’s original full-time residential neighborhood (as opposed to tourists and part-time residents)

Nowadays Kenwood is a community-connected neighborhood with active members who work to preserve its charm and authenticity.

As you can see, St Petersburg, Florida is a flourishing city full of interesting, unique and quirky charms. I hope you’ll get to visit one day to enjoy the arts, history and, of course, the sun, sand and sea that still remain in ‘Sunshine Capital of the USA’.

reporting from the road, cheers, Lash

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