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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.
Despite decades of research and practice demonstrating the value historic neighborhoods and and historic structures add to cities, property owners in historic neighborhoods sometimes encounter a swirl of myths, horror stories and half-truths.
