The Sulphur Springs Water Tower
The old Sulphur Spring water tower is located on the south side of Bird Street between Florida Avenue and I-275.
Different sources of information give varying heights for the tower.
Note spelling variation Sulphur instead of Sulfur. Sulphur is the traditional British English spelling, while Sulfur is the American English spelling.
The photo to the right shows a view from the southwest, taken from the south end of the bridge (Florida Ave.) that goes over the Hillsborough River.
In 1923 Tampa’s city limits were extended to include Sulphur Springs, the same year Josiah Richardson, a colorful entrepreneur arrived. First he built the Nebraska Hotel, better known as the Sulphur Springs Hotel and Arcade. It was Tampa's first shopping mall, with its hotel, apartments, the Springs Cafe, Whitehead’s Drug Store, Piggly Wiggly store, bakery, pool hall, barber shop, and a branch of the Sheriff’s office. Indeed, Robert L. Ripley featured the unique structure in his "Believe It or Not! ' cartoon, claiming it to be the world’s only city under one roof.
The Roarin’ 20s rolled on and in 1927 as real estate promoter Josiah Richardson constructed the 225-foot tall Sulphur Springs water tower on Florida Avenue at the Hillsborough River to serve his rapidly growing Sulphur Springs ventures. Constructed of poured-in-place concrete, the entire structure is on solid rock over a boiling spring. Today the tower stores the artesian well-water which still supplies a small area in Sulphur Springs. An elevator carried people up the cylinder to the observation balcony, which provided a panoramic view of this bucolic river setting. Richardson's original hope of club rooms occupying the floors between the spring-feed base and the storage tank never materialized.
(Book Excerpt) from PIONEER Commercial PHOTOGRAPHY The Burgert Brothers Tampa, Florida by Robert E. Snyder and Jack B. Moore
The "hump" on Florida Avenue as you approach the river from the south, is actually the James N. Holmes bridge, started in 1926. .
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The Florida Avenue bridge was completed in January, 1927. Prior to this the only means of traffic across the river, going north and south, was over the very narrow bridge on Nebraska Avenue, which was so narrow that traffic going north had to stop to allow south-bound traffic to pass, and vice versa
The view below is the Hillsborough River as seen looking east from the bridge.
The tower is on the property to the left and the bridge in the distance is Interstate 275.
From a June 14, 2000 St. Pete Times news article: The 214-foot tower is one of the city's most enduring landmarks. It supplied water to tourists during Florida's land boom in the 1920s, was a marketing gimmick for a drive-in theater and challenged generations of young climbers to scale its smooth, white surface.
A view of the tower from the northeast along Bird Street midway between Florida Avenue and I-275.
This area is to the left of the photo above. It was last the site of the old Tower Drive-In Theater.
The former site of the drive-in theater and the tower is all one property completely fenced-in.
Water Tower 1 Water Tower 2