Equitable Life Insurance Company group on lawn of Federal Building : Tampa, Fla.

Courtesy, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

About this photograph

Negative Number

C712

Date

February 8, 1931

Creator

Burgert Brothers

Publisher

Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library

Date of Photographic Print

2004 printing

Source (original item)

1 photograph : b&w ; 24 x 73 cm. +1 negative (24 x 73 cm.)

Format

JPEG2000

General Notes

Blemish is due to damaged negative.Neg. no. C712; taken 1931.;This panoramic photograph was taken by a Cirkut camera and might also be described with the following terms: 180, 360, wide angle, or elongated.

Cirkut Print Number

CP 1305

Subjects

Tampa in the 1930s

The 1930s photos show a Tampa that's coping, not booming — and there's plenty of life in them anyway. Downtown stores like Maas Brothers stayed open, streetcars kept running, and cars piled onto the new Davis Causeway to Clearwater (a toll road when it opened in January 1934). Ybor's cigar business shrank hard as cigarettes took over and factories mechanized or closed; the 1931 strike — some 8,000 workers walking out over the factory readers, the lectores — ended that beloved tradition for good. The New Deal left fingerprints everywhere: WPA crews finished Bayshore's seawall and roadway, built Peter O. Knight Airport, and got started on Drew Field. And Tampa Junior College, founded in 1931, moved into the old Tampa Bay Hotel as the University of Tampa in 1933. Photographs from the 1930s show Tampa carrying on — storefronts open, streetcars running, WPA crews reshaping the waterfront, and daily life continuing through hard years.

Sources: Ybor City Historic District Tampa FL (U.S. National Park Service); New Deal Sites – Tampa FL (Living New Deal); Timeline of Tampa, Florida (Wikipedia); History (University of Tampa)