New Suburb Beautiful
What is commonly referred to
by its residents as “New Suburb Beautiful” is actually three separate
subdivisions which were platted[1] in
early 1920’s and shared a common developer. Their creation and growth were part
of the great boom that swept Florida after the First World War. The boom was in
turn the local manifestation of the country’s phenomenal industrial development
which followed the Armistice.
Money paid out in wages by
the new industries to their workers did not only provide the necessities of
life. It also allowed for the luxuries offered by a wide array of consumer
goods being touted by a flourishing advertising industry, Radios, refrigerators
and vacuum cleaners were becoming standard features in American homes. But of
all the products offered, none was accepted as enthusiastically as the latest
variation on the wheel, the automobile.
The technological strides
made in mass production in the early part of this century were so great that
prices of cars actually deceased at the same time wages were rising. The plain
old “Model T’ gave way to the new line of dependable, but vastly more
comfortable, machines. The result was an unprecedented demand for the new
automobiles. Americans, not just a few but the broadened middle class majority
of them, now had money, increased leisure time and a means of transportation.
The obvious thing to do was travel.
After tiring of motoring in
familiar parts of the country, American sought more exotic vacation spots. One
of the first to be tried was Florida. The state at that time consisted of its
residents and a few tourists wealthy enough to pay for passage by train or
boat. The automobile, which ran on cheap gasoline refined from abundant crude
oil, provided the vehicle for a new invasion explorers. Unlike their rich
processors, the new travelers did not come to stay in palatial resorts or
private homes. Instead, they brought tents purchased from war surplus and boxes
of food preserved in tin cans. The vittles were to provide not only sustenance
but also a name of the motorist. They became known to the world as “tin
Canners”.
Holiday Inns and campsites
not being invented, the Tin Canners set up housekeeping wherever they found
accommodating governments or landowners. Both were in short supply, owing to a
lack of facilities capable of handling the great hoards. But some parts of the
states at least grudgingly accepted the new visitors. One of those hospitable
climates was Tampa, where Desoto Park became not just a favorite campsite but
the International headquarters of the Tin Can Tourists of America, an
organization formed in 1922 and in active existence until the early 40’s.
When travelers arrived in
Tampa, they found, in addition to sunshine and prehistoric animals, an area
which was on the brink of its own boom, having weathered some tough times. Once
an industrial center because of its shipyards, Tampa suffered economic
hardships beginning in 1918 when the shipyards closed, leaving 5000 people out
of work. A general strike in the cigar industry followed, lasted a year and put
10,000 people out of work. The post-war national depression came next and them,
on October 25, 1921, the worst hurricane to hit Florida since 1848 came ashore.
The natural disaster was a low point of the area’s fortunes. From that point,
the area’s fortunes turned upward.
The City’s port and its
central location made Tampa a natural commercial center for surrounding
communities such as ST. Petersburg, Bradenton and Fort Myers which were
catering to the thousands of tourists. Photographs of the City’s downtown area
taken in the period show acres of warehouses which loaded their contents on the
long line of boats and ships moored on the rover and bay. All of these
activities required workers in numbers greater than the available work force.
As a result, wages rose steadily at a time when prices were falling. In fact,
the cost of living in Tampa actually fell 20% from 1922 to 1924.
The period bustled with
optimism and a sense of destiny. City father Peter O. Knight was quoted in the
Tribune as saying: “The man who doesn’t get rich in Tampa in the next five
years doesn’t deserve to get rich because he has no faith in his country or his
city and he isn’t awake”.
The opportunities offered by
the area were obvious to the Tin Canners, many of whom unpacked their
belongings and went to work. By 1923, there were 100,000 people living in
Tampa. All of these immigrants needed places to live and housing was a scare
commodity.
Tampa had grown from a
military installation, Fort Brooke, located roughly on the present site of the
City’s downtown. From there the town spread northward toward the high, dry
areas of Seminole Heights and beyond. The interbay peninsula, that area of the
City south of Kennedy Boulevard, was little more than a depressed land mass
which was flooded by summer rains and covered chiefly with palmettos and salt
flats. Only the southern most areas of the peninsula (the Port Tampa and
Ballast Point areas) and a few of the higher points near the water were
developed by the early part of the century. So great was the growth of the
1920’s, however, that even the unused land became attractive.
One of the first areas to be
developed was in the general area of what is now Bayshore, between Howard
Avenue and Platt Street. The area was dredged and filled by the Tampa Bay Co.
and named Suburb Beautiful. The response of the public was so gratifying that
the company went on to develop Palma Ceia Park (the area bounded by Barcelona
and Julia Streets, Bayshore Boulevard and Macdill Avenue) and the interbay area
was moving. In 1917 the Palma Ceia Golf Course became the second set of links
in town (Rocky Point being the first) and a development bearing the name was
thrown around it. The peninsula began to compete with other established
subdivisions.
Real Estate was a booming
industry in the Tampa of this time. In one year, from 1923 to 1924, the costs
of area real estate went from an average of $50.00 per acre to as high as
$10,000 for the same plot of land. However, much of that appreciation was due
to some determined selling. Developers usually only cleared land, put in
streets (sometimes of shell) and planted some simple landscaping. They then
turned over the barely improved property to armies of salesman, all attired in
the association approved uniform which included a mandatory straw boater.
One of the enlisted men in the
great sales effort was Allen J. Simms, a remarkable man who was to become one
of the most active developers of his day. Simms had come to Tampa in 9106 from
New Brunswick, Canada. He was seventeen. He taught English at the Tampa
Business College for six months but left to go to work for the Tampa Bay Co.,
where he soon became one of the Company’s premier salesman. In 1908 he went
into business for himself, developing a small subdivision called Boulevard
Heights, located just north of Ballast Point. After that success he returned to
selling real estate, until 1915. In that year he returned home to enlist in the
Canadian Army which was already fighting in Europe. He returned to Tampa in
1919 and quickly picked up his developments.
In six years of nearly constant
activity, Simms developed and sold some 400 acres of Tampa lands upon which he
had built 380 homes, ranging in price from Six to Twenty Thousand Dollars. In
1925 his Company began construction of the Floridian Hotel. Completed in 1926
and opened for business the following year, the hotel cost $1,900,000 to build
and furnish. At 18 stories it was the tallest building in Florida.
Later Simms built the
Michigan Avenue Bridge (at a cost of $279,000) and then developed that street
at a cost of $1,000,000. When the boom ended, Simms turned to developing orange
groves, marketing some 500 more acres of land. In his life Simms built over
1500 houses in Tampa and St. Petersburg, including New Suburb Beautiful and
Parkland Estates. In light of that activity it is significant that his widow,
Mrs. Thelma Simms, today lives in New Suburb Beautiful.
Development of New Suburb
Beautiful began in 1923 when the subdivision bearing that name was platted. It
consisted of 211 lots located on Sunset Drive and Prospect Road between Howard
and MacDill (then Lisbon) Avenues and the north side of Watrous Avenue between
Howard and a point near MacDill Avenue. Sunset and Prospect were typical
subdivision appellations. Watrous was named for the old Tampa family whose
members had originally owned the land which became present day Hyde Park and
New Suburb Beautiful. As platted, the developed streets were continuous as
Marti and Georgia streets were not yet in existence.
The subdivision was platted
with restrictions placed upon the subject lots in an effort to maintain the
exclusivity of the neighborhood. These included the requirements that:
1.
They be used only
for single family dwellings worth at least $6,000.00;
2.
The residence
face the street and be set back to established lines;
3.
No bungalettes be
built (but servants’ quarters were generously allowed); and
4.
No nuisances
would be maintained.
Simms set about the task of
selling the new lots with his typical enthusiasm. A typical newspaper
advertisement proclaimed the area the “subdivision supreme.” It spoke first of
wide sidewalks and streets of “velvet asphalt.” “The developers of this ideal
subdivision have spared no expense to make New Suburb Beautiful the most
desirable subdivision in the county” Planted parkways have added to the natural
beauty of lots upon which master craftsman have built houses ready for
occupancy.” (The Tampa Tribune, January 6, 1924).
The pitch was bought. The
success enjoyed by Simms and his partners led to the further development. West
New Suburb Beautiful, 34 lots located on Sunset and Prospect between Libson and
New Suburb Beautiful, came in January of 1924, followed in April by North View
Suburb Beautiful, 141 lots on Morrison, Jetton, and Watrous Avenues between
Howard and Lisbon. Matt Jetton had been a developer of the Western part of Hyde
Park; Morrison was named for the man who had overseen that work. Both streets
were extensions of established roadways platted through earlier subdivision. As
part of the latest developments, Marti and Georgia streets were cut through the
subdivision. As with the original lots, the new offerings were sold as the
Florida boom continued. However, the subdivisions’ fortunes took a sharp turn
when the crash came.
As was the case in the early
twenties, Tampa’s bust preceded and worsened the effect of the national crash
on 1929. The resultant devastation was felt by developers as well as home
owners. Many of the houses in the New Suburb Beautiful subdivisions changed
hands in the period, often for prices below their original costs. The situation
continued through the depression but recovery began even before the Second
World War. The increased productivity of the late forties and early fifties
created a new wave of building in the area and produced in the subdivisions the
current mixture of different architectural styles.
Throughout all of the comings
and goings of the neighborhood there was a solid consistency to the
neighborhood. Families living in New Suburb Beautiful are in some cases the
fourth generations of its original residents. Others are living in third,
fourth, and fifth house in the subdivision. Numerous families have moved out
and then returned with new families to the neighborhood. Neighbors married
neighbors. Houses were damaged or allowed to run down and then rebuilt. Through
those events and occurrences the neighborhood became what it is today.