Tampa at Midcentury: 1950

Sunland Tribune Volume 26 01/01/2000 Article 9 2000 Tampa at Midcentury: 1950 Gary Mormino Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune Recommended Citation Mormino, Gary (2000) "Tampa at Midcentury: 1950," Sunland Tribune: Vol. 26 , Article 9. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune/vol26/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sunland Tribune by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tampa at Midcentury: 1950 Dr. Gary Mormino Miami surged by 59 percent and 45 percent respectfully. To most Tampa The 1950s triggered Tampa Bay’s Big leaders, the lesson was simple: Expand Bang. National prosperity, Social or Die. Indeed, the early 1950s spawned Security, and Cold War defense a number of annexation attempts to bring spending made the Florida Dream into Tampa’s boundaries the population possible to new generations of rich neighborhoods of Palma Ceia, Americans. Technological wizardry, Beach Park, Sulphur Springs, and Port most notably air conditioning, DDT, and Tampa City.1 superhighways, made Florida endurable and endearing. In 1950, Hillsborough The schism between Tampa and and Pinellas Counties totaled 409,143 Hillsborough County widened in the late residents. By the end of the decade, the 1940s and early 1950s, when for the first two counties combined had almost time, the county’s population gains three-quarters of a million residents, an outpaced the city’s. For almost a century, astounding population increase of 89 Tampa had claimed the lion’s share of percent. Demographers, bureaucrats, and Hillsborough County’s population. It was wordsmiths coined new terms to not that Hillsborough County’s other describe the changes sweeping the new towns threatened Tampa’s hegemony; in decade: suburban sprawl, climate fact, in 1950 Plant City numbered 9,230, control, and metropolitan area. Port Tampa City 1,497, and Temple Terrace only 423. Rather, new growth When officials released the results of the was settling in the county’s 1950 census, local and county leaders unincorporated areas. New reacted with expected ballyhoo. Upon developments were springing up along closer inspection, the tabulations posed South Dale Mabry Highway, Sulphur more questions than answers. In 1950, Springs, and especially the Interbay census takers counted 124,681 Tampa peninsula. In 1950, Fowler Avenue was residents, making the Cigar City a crude dirt road while Temple Terrace Florida’s third largest city. The Highway, the future Busch Boulevard, tumultuous decade of the 1940s was a two-lane road. To the north, east, experienced dizzying population and west was undeveloped, cheap land.2 mobility, but Tampa had grown a scant 15 percent. If Tampa’s growth was Midcentury downtown combined modest, Hillsborough County’s increase curious parts of dynamism and decay. was spectacular, its population Downtown Tampa still claimed the expanding 39 percent to 249,894. area’s most powerful banks, most envied corporations, and most prestigious For all of the self-congratulation, stores, but the central business district Tampa’s expansion paled when had been stagnating for some time. No compared to its urban rivals. While significant new building had been Tampa grew by 15 percent during the erected for decades. The era’s most decade of 1940-1950, St. Petersburg and colorful baseball player and philosopher, As the Tampa Bay area began to grow very rapidly in 1950, and the population grew more prosperous, the newest automobiles were just the way to move families of baby-boomer kids to homes in new suburbs. Shown is the Oldsmobile 88 Holiday hardtop coupe for 1950. Cost? $2183. (Photograph courtesy of Ferman Motor Car Company) Yogi Berra, could have been describing Island still had large sections waiting for Tampa’s central business district when homebuilders. Large numbers of young he said of a certain restaurant, "No one Latin families left Ybor City in the ever goes there anymore. It’s always 1950s, gravitating toward West Tampa, crowded!" Shoppers and commuters but also to the more Americanized complained incessantly of downtown’s neighborhoods "off limits" to Latins lack of parking lots, overabundance of before the war. In 1950, a family could parking meters, and rush-hour traffic. By buy a new 3-bedroom home in Beach the end of the decade, shoppers literally Park for $10,250. In Hyde Park, Miss and figuratively steered away from Jonnie L. Cape purchased the Peter O. downtown Tampa, electing to patronize Knight "honeymoon" bungalow for the new shopping malls and suburban $11,000. The home, located on Hyde businesses. Park Avenue, later became the headquarters for the Tampa Historical In 1950, real estate traffic was brisk. Society.3 New construction filled in vacant lots in the city, but the most frenzied Honeymoon bungalows and development occurred in the Mediterranean Revivals in Palma Ceia unincorporated county. No single and Hyde Park graced the real estate individual comparable to David P. Davis section of the Tribune and Times, but the had yet sketched out a vision for era’s most popular home was the Tampa’s postwar suburbs; indeed Davis inexpensive, concrete-block ranch house. Terrazzo floors were the rage. Tampa faced competition not only from Tampa’s working classes were also on suburban Hillsborough County, but the march, migrating to newly developed Pinellas County. The 1950s was a sections of Sulphur Springs, West decade of reckoning. St. Petersburg and Tampa, and Belmont Heights. Sulphur Pinellas County, once regarded as a Springs had boomed throughout the quaint collection of beach resorts and 1940s as thousands of working-class small towns, began to challenge Tampa. homeowners sought cheap housing, a Surging numbers of new residents, country setting, and freedom from chiefly retirees from the Midwest and zoning. Jim Walter homes and septic Northeast, buoyed the populations of tanks characterized the development of Dunedin, Kenneth City and Pinellas Sulphur Springs and other Park. Trailer parks were the rage. St. unincorporated areas. Walter’s "shell Petersburg grew dramatically during the houses" found eager buyers who paid 1940s, adding 36,000 new residents. The $850 (lot, appliances, and moving fee average age of the population of St. not included) for a slice of the Florida Petersburg made it one of America’s Dream. Property in the county was oldest cities. Almost one in every four cheap. A 10-acre farm off 22nd Street residents was 65 years and older; in was advertised for $6,560.4 Tampa the proportion was 1 in 11. By 1950, Pinellas County was Florida’s The suburbs and country enticed most densely populated county, with shoppers increasingly frustrated by over 600 inhabitants per square mile. Tampa’s traffic. In 1950, the automobile Pinellas had grown by 73 percent during reigned supreme. Tampa had ended its the 1940s, in contrast to Hillsborough’s trolley operations in 1946. Residents in 39 percent.7 Hyde Park, Ybor City, and Seminole Heights still patronized small, Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties family-run grocery stores, while new battled for supremacy throughout the chain supermarkets - many of them air 1950s. The rights to fresh water, the conditioned - opened in the suburbs, location of a public university, and the such as the new A & P supermarkets on recruitment of industry fostered a bitter Dale Mabry Highway near Henderson, rivalry. Historic jealousies and Dale Mabry and Jetton.5 notwithstanding, the U.S. Census of 1950 confirmed that Florida’s west coast Contemporaries praised the new was becoming a major population center. suburban businesses and homes, so Henceforth, announced officials, described by an observer as "built Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties mostly in the bright tropical motif." would be considered one metropolitan Suburbia, contended a reporter, was unit. Tampa Bay, once a body of water, "unsnarling traffic" and "rekindling the had become an urban yardstick, the small-town spirit of mutual helpfulness largest population center in the fastest and leisure living." A half-century later, growing state in America.8 few Tampa Bay residents agree that decades of suburban growth have Tampa Bay may have been Florida’s "unsnarled traffic."6 most populous metropolitan area in 1950, but it still had no public The front page headline of the Tampa Daily Times of Wednesday, May 3, 1950, proclaims the election results in favor of George Smathers over Claude Pepper for his U.S. Senate seat. Smathers is shown with arms upraised celebrating a big victory over the incumbent. (Courtesy of Special Collections Library, University of South Florida) university. That year did bring good opportunities at the University. In 1950, news to the University of Tampa. Since a new faculty member, historian James its founding as a private junior college in Covington, arrived under the Minarets. 1931, the University of Tampa had struggled in depression, war and peace. The 1950s also brought a "golden age" Returning veterans had bolstered of football to the University of Tampa. enrollment, but the school’s academic Playing in front of small crowds at and financial woes persisted. In 1950, Phillips Field, the University’s football the University received news that team, the Spartans, delighted local fans. accreditation was imminent. The G.I. Since the 1940s, the University of Bill, accreditation, and an endowment of Florida had played one game a year at $500,000 saved the University of aging Phillips Field but this ended in Tampa. Future civic leaders, such as Bob 1950 when Auburn University refused to Martinez, Sam Rampello, and Dick play at such a "small stadium." Florida Greco took advantage of educational State University, however, was delighted to be invited to Phillips Field. On New scarcity, but postwar prosperity and the Year’s Day 1950 the Seminoles’ Cold War created new anxieties.

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