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Looking back #143 - Postal Notes on St. Petersburg, Florida



 
 
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Old December 6th 05, 07:47 PM posted to rec.collecting.stamps.discuss
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Default Looking back #143 - Postal Notes on St. Petersburg, Florida

Postal Notes on St. Petersburg, Florida

"After the Civil War folks coming to the peninsula
[Pinellas Point] clustered at Big Bayou, also called
Pinellas Village (on the southeast side of today's City).

Boasting a half dozen shops and a modest hotel,
it established its own post office in 1876 with
early settler John Bethell as postmaster. It closed
when St. Petersburg's post office in 1907 became
the major center for mail for the peninsula."

The state of Florida was unique in that most
federally owned land was given to the state as
worthless, mosquito infested, swamp land.
The state soon put it up for sale. Six railroads
and a wealthy Philadelphian, Hamilton Disston,
soon owned most of Florida (in fact, an
inventory showed the state had sold more
land than it owned).

Disston purchased 4,000,000 acres in 1881
and by 1884 he "... had formed the Disston
City Land Co. and filed a plat of 'Disston City'
spread out on 12,000 acres of the southern
end of Point Pinellas ..." -- the ultimate site
of St. Petersburg.

"When the mail did arrive [at Disston City],
it was addressed to the town of 'Bonifacio.'
Postal officials refused to designate the city
as 'Disston City' because of a town north
of Tampa with the similar name of 'Diston.'
The moniker 'bonifacio,' the story goes,
was the middle name of a Disston aide."

Disston City went into a decline shortly
after 1886 when Disston broke off
negotiations with the Russian Peter
A. Demens, a railroad builder, for
providing service to Disston City.

Shortly thereafter a deal was made
for an alternate route for the railroad
to reach Tampa Bay on land owned
by General John C. Williams who
was interested in building a city
on 1,600 acres he owned after
having failed earlier as a farmer
on the land. This was to become
the heart of St. Petersburg.
(Incidentally, St. Petersburg is
thought to have been named
for his home city by the
Russian Demens.)

"The beautiful Snell Arcade in the
Snell Building at Central and Fourth ...
was finished in 1928. [The Arcade]
led to the post office ... The Snell
Arcade is gone. The mosaic and
statuary in the arcade were bought
by C. Perry Snell on trips to Europe."

An "Open Air Post Office [was] built
in 1917 at Fourth Street and First
Avenue North ... [It] changed little
over the years. ... The front was
left out of the building so box holders
could get their mail day or night."

Note: These notes are taken from
St. Petersburg: Once Upon a Time
by Del Marth,

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  #2  
Old December 6th 05, 07:49 PM posted to rec.collecting.stamps.discuss
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Default Looking back #143 - Postal Notes on St. Petersburg, Florida

ADDENDUM

St. Petersburg: Once Upon a Time by Del Marth, is
copyright 1976 by the City of St. Petersburg, Florida.

 




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