On This Land - Part 4 - The 1920s

To learn more about this part of St. Pete History, we headed to the St. Petersburg Museum of History on the pier. There were some more general exhibits, but I got lost in the back room, which had a densely packed history of St. Petersburg and our region. I highly recommend a trip to the museum and pier.

In the later 1910's early 1920s, inventive marketing and well intentioned real estate types did a major campaign to get both tourists and permanent residents to our area. (Which kind of reminded me of all the Visit St. Pete/Clearwater signs I've been seeing on the NYC subway the last few years). During this time in 1925 my house was built, and Fruitland Heights was established as a neighborhood. But unfortunately hard times were just around the corner.

In 1926, a huge hurricane struck, and people were ill prepared. This put a major damper on said marketing people and well intentioned realtors ability to sell their dream to cold northerners, and for that and many other contributing reasons, the Florida housing bubble was suddenly starting to burst. Here's a wiki article on this super deep and interesting topic. which has a lot of parallels to the 2000's market crash.

In 1928 there was another big hurricane and then in 1929, the Mediterranean Fruit Fly infested about 75% of citrus, devastating the industry.

I'd like to take a second to consider what role Prohibition, passed on Jan 16, 1919 might have played in the Florida land bubble too.

Here I am singing a very funny song about prohibition...

Florida's proximity to Cuba and the Bahama's made access to rum (and other liquor) much more available and cheaper. True to form, before it was a federal amendment, Florida was leaning toward being a dry state, electing the only Prohibition party Governor in 1917, Sidney Catts. Fun article about Prohibition in Florida

And Here's where our Fruitland Heights history and this great big story of our nation smack together. Prohibition created a huge illegal subculture that flourished like never before. And one of its top characters, Al Capone, lived right across the street from our neighborhood! Like on the other side of 22nd Ave. S. from Fruitland Heights. I spoke to the current home owners family member, who said he has lovingly restored the house, but doesn't like publicity, so I'm not going to tell its address. But he also said, when it was built, you could see all the way to the water from the 2nd floor!

When the stock market crashed in 1929, Florida had been on tough times for many years.

Can't write an article about the 1920s and omit Women getting the right to vote! Congress was really busy telling people what they couldn't do at that time, drink, vote...but finally on August 18, 1920, what women had been working towards for 70 years came to fruition. However, even though Florida complied with the 19th amendment, they only ratified it in 1969. There's a great exhibit at the St. Pete History Museum about suffrage and the women of St. Petersburg, from history and today.