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Curious to learn more about preservation or ways to get involved in your community, but don’t know where to start? We’re here to help. In our blog, our preservation experts break down current advocacy issues, ways to get involved, and local St. Pete happenings.
If a building could talk, one would certainly want to sit down with the Snell building, anticipating a fascinating and unique conversation. The hard part would be how to choose the topics to fit into a single conversation! Should the conversation include how the Snell managed to rise in 1928 as the bust was taking over St. Petersburg, and include stories about the building’s original owner/developer, C. Perry Snell, whose second career as a developer raised the value of more property on the Pinellas Peninsula than any other individual or group over a nearly forty year time span? Or, one could easily spend a day discussing the Snell’s architect, Richard Kiehnel, and the architectural style and detailing he chose, including the arcade that banker Hubert Rutland closed off after he purchased the building in 1943! Finally, the Snell could explain to you how today’s owners have used existing preservation incentives to again make the building one of the downtown stars and a building fit for modern times.
Known as “The King of the Beats,” Jack Kerouac was one of history’s most influential American writers. His spontaneous, free-form writings, such as On the Road, spawned the hippie movement and continue to influence American culture—including music, art, and literature—to this day.
Would we be St. Pete without the buildings that makes us special? Can you imagine downtown without the funky Crislip Arcade in Central Avenue’s 600 Block or without First Block and the city’s most historic building—the Detroit Hotel, built by the city founders in 1888? What about Fourth Street without the iconic Sunken Gardens or 22nd Street without Mercy Hospital or the Manhattan Casino? Would St. Pete be the same without these historic pieces to our built environment?
Bungalow courts are characterized by their unique design - two parallel rows of five or six cottages, facing inward, separated by a wide, hexagon-brick path or communal “court”. They recall an earlier era of housing shortages, when episodic influxes of seasonal and permanent residents strained the available housing stock, and property owners and builders got creative with their spaces. It recalls a time when people valued affordable, multi-family dwellings that promoted neighborliness and community in a proto-suburban setting.
