Assignment: St. Petersburg » bridges

Snell Isle Bridge

Bob Horn — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:02:33 +0000

This is the Snell Isle Bridge as it looks today. Originally constructed in the late 1920’s, the bridge’s very existence is a testament to the power of women in early St. Petersburg’s history. C. Perry Snell, the St. Petersburg developer who built so many of the beautiful homes and developed so many of the beautiful neighborhoods in St. Petersburg, donated a gift of land on Snell Isle to the St. Petersburg Woman’s Club in 1928. The Club initially wasn’t sure that they wanted to accept the gift, because the land was across the water from the mainland, it was beyond the street car line, it was located in what was then a jungle, and the only means of access to it was via a very rickety wooden bridge. But the Woman’s Club did accept the gift for their new clubhouse, and they immediately began to push the City Council to tear down the old wooden bridge and construct a new, state of the art drawbridge over Coffee Pot Bayou. On Christmas Day 1931, the new $100,000 bridge was dedicated and opened to traffic. Somewhere in the 1940’s, the drawbridge stopped being opened on demand, but the mechanism stayed in place until 1995. In 1995, The City of St. Petersburg essentially rebuilt the bridge, keeping as close as possible to the original look and feel, restoring the original street lamps, but replacing the drawbridge with a fixed span. It’s a very picturesque, often photographed, and often painted landmark in St. Petersburg. You can find the bridge by heading east on 22nd Avenue North until the road ends at Coffee Pot Bayou, then turning right one block.

Snell Isle Bridge (click picture for larger image)

A Piece of Gandy Bridge History

Bob Horn — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:58:14 +0000

Postcard of Gandy Bridge Early Years

Original Gandy Bridge Toll Gate

Before the days of the Gandy Bridge, if you wanted to travel between St. Petersburg and Tampa, you had to drive north, around Tampa Bay. It was a long and fairly arduous drive and because of that, St. Petersburg and Tampa felt as though they were worlds apart. That all changed when George Gandy decided to build a bridge across the Bay. It took several years of planning, then more years of waiting for World War I to be over, then more waiting while supplies began to become available again. But eventually, in July of 1923, the first piling was placed to support the new bridge across the Bay. The new Gandy Bridge opened to great fanfare on November 20, 1924. President Calvin Coolidge was invited to attend the opening, since he was already planning a pleasure trip to Florida. From the October 29, 1924 issue of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent, a transcript of a wire that was sent to the President from the Gandy Bridge Company: “Being informed that you are planning a pleasure trip to Florida in November, we respectfully invite you to dedicate the longest automobile toll bridge in the world in the hope that you might find it convenient to visit St. Petersburg and Tampa on November 20, upon which date Governor Hardee of Florida and the governors of many of the states have planned to be present for the occasion.” The wire was signed: “Gandy Bridge Co. George S. Gandy, President”. Although I could not locate any articles indicating that President Coolidge took George Gandy up on his offer, this new bridge was clearly a very big deal and it started a new dynamic, both social and business based, between St. Petersburg and Tampa. In fact, just a little over a year after the bridge opened, an article in the Feb 24, 1926 Evening Independent stated that traffic had doubled in one year and that there was already talk of a need for widening the bridge. ”The figures show that a heavy traffic has crossed our bridge”, says President Gandy in his report. “On Sundays the bridge has furnished passage to as high as seven thousand machines”.

Toll Gate Preservation Plaque

Although the Gandy Bridge has long been a free bridge between St. Petersburg and Tampa, when it first opened, and for many years following, it was a toll bridge. It had been constructed with private funds and, in order to repay loans and make a profit, a toll was charged. And so we arrive at the piece of Gandy Bridge history that I referred to in the title of this post. One of the original toll gates constructed in 1923/1924 has been preserved and stands at the entrance to the now closed Friendship Trail Bridge, which is an old Gandy Bridge span, located just to the left of the Gandy Bridge as you approach from St. Petersburg. If you’d like to see it close up, just turn left as you approach the Gandy Bridge at the sign for the last U turn before the bridge. Follow the little roadway towards the Friendship Trail entrance and you’ll pretty much run right into the toll gate.

And, speaking of the Friendship Trail, there’s hope for repair, revitalization, and reopening in the future. I’ll publish a post on this topic in the next couple of weeks.

Sunshine Skyway After Dark

Bob Horn — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 03:17:37 +0000

Anyone who has seen the Sunshine Skyway bridge after dark knows what a stunning sight it is – glowing golden cables against the dark night sky. It’s a spectacular enough looking bridge in broad daylight, but at night, it is truly breathtaking.

I wanted to take a photograph so that I could show it off to those who haven’t had the chance to see it. My first attempt was to shoot it was with a long telephoto lens from the East Beach at Fort De Soto Park. Although the park closes at dark, my wife and I surreptitiously stuck around and I did take some photos, but the sky was a bit hazy and, even though it’s relatively close, it was still too far to provide a good view.

The obvious best place to get a great shot would be from a boat, but we don’t have one, and I wanted my photo!

So, it occurred to me that the fishing pier alongside the south side of the Skyway bridge might provide a good photo opportunity. For those who are not familiar with the fishing pier, here’s the situation. When the new Skyway was built, they tore down the middle section of the old Skyway but left the approaches to it standing and they turned them into drive-on fishing piers. I’ve seen them hundreds of times as I’ve driven on the Skyway, but I’ve never actually gone on them, because I’m not a fisherman. So this was my first time, and I hoped that maybe we’d get a little bit of a view.

We crossed the Skyway and turned off onto the Rest Area/Fishing Pier exit. We paid the admission fee (the ’sightseer’ rate, which I think was $3) and drove onto the old bridge, heading towards the middle of the bay. Speed limit on the bridge/pier was 5 MPH, which was sensible, ’cause there were hundreds of people on the bridge! As we got close to the end of the span, we parked and started walking.

I just have to say that we were so surprised and so amazed at what we encountered. We had expected a bunch of fishermen and women leaning over the side of the bridge, busy with their fishing, maybe looking askance at us for disturbing them. But what we saw were families, people having cookouts on portable grills, people with roped off areas having birthday parties, little children running around as happy as can be, watching their moms and dads and siblings fishing. We saw two men playing a giant game of what looked like maybe dominoes or checkers or backgammon as they waited for a bite. Everyone was friendly and welcoming and people smiled and said ‘hi’ to us and we felt quite at home.

If you love fishing, you should definitely go and check this place out! Even if you aren’t into fishing, you should still come by if you’d like to have a fantastic view of the bridge, as we did. And, yes, I did get my photograph!

Sunshine Skyway After Dark