We don’t hear it so much these days, but St. Petersburg has been known as “The Sunshine City” since the early 1900′s.  There was a great desire to grow the city back in those days, to add both residents and tourism.  Because our fantastic weather has always been one of the big selling points of our city, and because we have sunshine almost every day of the year, the city fathers decided to adopt the slogan of “The Sunshine City”.  Back then, we had two newspapers in town – the morning paper, which was the St. Petersburg Times, and an evening paper, independently owned and not in any way affiliated with the Times.  It was called the St. Petersburg Independent and, later, The Evening Independent.  The owner of that newspaper made a public pledge, printed in the paper, that if there was ever a day where the sun did not shine here at all for the entire day, the next day’s newspaper would be free!  For the 76 year life of the newspaper, a total of 296 editions were given away – not bad for 76 years!  (In the 1960′s, the Independent was purchased by the St. Petersburg Times, then finally shut down in 1986.)

This public art sculpture, situated outside of the St. Petersburg Museum of History, celebrates the “Sunshine City” name, as well as our famous green benches, and even the pledge for free newspapers if the sun didn’t shine.  With the Sunscreen film festival in town this weekend, it just seemed an appropriate opportunity to salute our sunshine!