Making a Sunbelt Place: Tampa, Florida, 1923–1964
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MAKING A SUNBELT PLACE: TAMPA, FLORIDA, 1923 – 1964 By ALAN J. BLISS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2010 1 © 2010 Alan J. Bliss 2 To my wife Lynn, with gratitude for traveling a long highway with me 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Such success as this project may enjoy owes to many teachers at both Santa Fe Community College and the University of Florida. No one has been more influential in my academic life than the remarkable Robert Zieger, now Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida. Since the day in 1998 when I appeared in his office doorway, he has skillfully supervised my undergraduate honors thesis, my master’s paper, and this dissertation. He has made me a historian, and pulled it off with a deft combination of scholarly rigor, expertise, and good humor. I count our professional relationship and our friendship as my good fortune. My thanks also go to Barbara Oberlander of Santa Fe Community College, who aimed me in the direction of a distant goal, and referred me to Robert Zieger. In addition to Bob Zieger as chair, my dissertation committee included Jack Davis, Joseph Spillane, Jeffrey Needell, and Grant Thrall. Their perspectives on my project varied, but their thoughtful criticism throughout the research and writing process encouraged me and improved my work. Contrary to what some outside the academy may believe, to members of the graduate faculty at a research institution such as the University of Florida, every working hour is precious. I thank each of them. Many others at the University of Florida have been so consistently generous to me that I can only aspire to emulate their example as teachers, mentors, and colleagues. They include Jeffrey Adler, Juliana Barr, Fitz Brundage, Michael Bowen, Bruce Chappell, Jim Cusick, David Colburn, Craig Dosher, Ronald Formisano, Alice Friefeld, Matt Gallman, Michael Gannon, David Geggus, Geoffrey Giles, Charles Montgomery, Louise Newman, Paul Ortiz, Julian Pleasants, Mark Thurner, Murdo MacLeod, Robert McMahon, Steven Noll, Patricia Schmidt, Jon Sensbach, Ruth Steiner, David Tegeder, 4 Carl Van Ness, Brian Ward, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and the late, great, unforgettable Sam Proctor. I also thank the staff of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, and the Department of History. In Tampa, I benefitted from the help of countless people who took an interest in this project, many of whom have become friends. I particularly acknowledge Paul Camp, Warren Cason, Paul Danahy, Jr., Liz Dunham, Sam Gibbons, Mark Greenberg, Leland Hawes, Ben Hill, Jr., Robert Kerstein, Blaine Howell, Clewis Howell, George and Mary Lib Howell, Andy Huse, Rodney Kite-Powell, Gary Mormino, Steve Otto, Curtis Welch, and the staff of the City of Tampa Archives and Records Service. In Jacksonville, I came to depend upon the diligence and expertise of Eileen Brady and Bruce Latimer, both of the University of North Florida’s Thomas Carpenter Library, Jim Crooks and Dan Schafer, both of UNF’s History Department, and Joel McEachin of the City of Jacksonville. During my two years of teaching at UNF, many fine students in my courses stimulated me to greater insights, and reinforced the connection between teaching and scholarship. Elsewhere, I received invaluable help from Christian Simons LaRoche. I regret that she did not live to see the product of the hours we spent discussing her late father, George W. Simons, Jr. I am also grateful to Kathleen Haggerty Carroll and her brother, William Haggerty, Jr., for generously sharing memories and mementos of their late father, Bill Haggerty. My family and cherished friends have shared this experience by reinforcing my determination while tempering my preoccupation, graciously suffering my attempts to explain what I was doing, generously putting me up, introducing me to fresh ideas and 5 sources, and generally being present when it counted. Here is where I promised your name would one day appear, if we all lived long enough. Thanks to my daughters Erin Seickel and Laurel Bowers, my niece Rebecca Bliss and her husband Bryan Hosack, my nephew Rodger Bliss and his wife Candy, my cousin (and insightful observer of Tampa’s people) Sharon Mims McBride, Nancy Appunn, Julian Chambliss, Ernie and Donna Estevez, Margaret Harwell, Ben Houston, Art and Nina Nicholson, Steve Smith, and Mac and Paula Tyner. At more than a dozen academic conferences throughout the country, I have presented aspects of my research and gained much from exchanges with my audiences and my fellow panelists. I have come to particularly appreciate the members of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History, the Social Science History Association (a stimulatingly diverse group), the Urban History Association, and the Florida Historical Society. Thanks above all go to my wife Lynn, to whom this dissertation is dedicated in appreciation for her supportive commitment to its completion. Finally, for the rest of my days I will be grateful to three people for having fostered in me the gifts and abilities that made this undertaking possible. They are my parents, Reef and Maude Bliss, and the late Reverend Lacy R. Harwell. My greatest regret is that they are not here to help celebrate its conclusion, but they would want the party to go on, as it shall. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................... 4 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................ 9 ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................ 10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 13 2 THE 1920s: PROLOGUE TO A SUNBELT PLACE .................................................. 18 Land and Lending ....................................................................................................... 22 Auto-mobility and Land ............................................................................................... 30 Reinventing Tampa..................................................................................................... 36 The Bubble Disappears .............................................................................................. 42 Tampa’s New Culture of Civic Entrepreneurship ...................................................... 53 3 TAMPA’S NEW DEALS, 1930-1942 .......................................................................... 58 The Business of Politics ............................................................................................. 62 Business and Politics Underground ........................................................................... 71 Tampa’s New Business Deals ................................................................................... 82 The New Deal Over Tampa........................................................................................ 92 Reform and Resistance ............................................................................................ 100 New Deals in Housing .............................................................................................. 112 New Deal for an Old Order ....................................................................................... 116 4 PLANNING FOR PEACE, 1940-1945...................................................................... 120 Planning and Zoning a New Tampa ......................................................................... 125 Tampa’ Economic Development Committee ........................................................... 137 Tampa’s Port Ambitions ........................................................................................... 151 Aviation ..................................................................................................................... 170 Highways ................................................................................................................... 180 Tampa’s Distinctive Planning Coalition .................................................................... 186 5 SUNBELT ENTREPRENEURS: 1945 – 1956 ......................................................... 196 Tampa’s Postwar Regime ........................................................................................ 199 Tampa’s Seaport Economy ...................................................................................... 211 Waste and Waterways .............................................................................................. 221 Airport Metropolis ...................................................................................................... 228 Outgrowing Organized Crime ................................................................................... 235 7 Toward a Coherent Economy................................................................................... 241 6 AN EXPRESSWAY RUNS THROUGH IT: 1956-1962 ........................................... 243 An Expressway to Growth ........................................................................................ 245 An Expressway to Democracy ................................................................................. 256 An Expressway to the Sunbelt ................................................................................