Copy of old photograph of Tampa Yacht and Country Club : Tampa, Fla.

Courtesy, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

About this photograph

Photograph Order Number

PA 2681

Negative Number

72844-4; 72844-5

Date

circa 1905

Creator

Burgert Brothers

Publisher

Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library

Date of Photographic Print

1978 printing

Source (original item)

1 photograph : b&w ; 26 x 21 cm. +1 negative (26 x 21 cm.)

Format

JPEG2000

General Notes

Taken circa 1905. Copied February 10, 1955. Two images (both 13 x 18 cm.) oriented portrait-style. Top image shot across yacht basin; bottom image taken from shore. Images blemished due to damaged negative. These photos are part of a series of photos. Order number 6748. Ledger states: "3 aerials of Yacht Club. 2 copies of old photos."

Subjects

Tampa in the 1900s

The 1900s were Tampa's boomtown years. Ybor City was already being called the Cigar Capital of the World by 1900, and across the river, West Tampa — built up from 1892 by Hugh Macfarlane, incorporated in 1895 — kept adding factories until more than 200 of them were rolling out over a million cigars a day by 1910. Electric streetcars tied it all together: downtown, Ybor, West Tampa, Tampa Heights, all the way south to Ballast Point. Phosphate, citrus, and shipping kept the port humming, and Henry Plant's 511-room Tampa Bay Hotel was still the place to winter, even after the city bought it in 1905. And in May 1904, Tampa threw its very first Gasparilla pirate parade — on horseback. Photographs from this decade show that boomtown confidence up close — downtown commerce, the port at work, streetcars on new lines, and Tampa's first Gasparilla parades.

Sources: Birth of Ybor City, the Cigar Capital of the World (Library of Congress); Tampa's historic streetcars (Tampa Bay History Center); Tampa Bay Hotel (U.S. National Park Service); Gasparilla (City of Tampa)