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Bayshore Still 'A Special Place'

Tribune photo by JULIE BUSCH

Pelicans are framed by the wall along Bayshore Boulevard. The city has moved forward with designating Bayshore a scenic corridor.

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By MICHAEL H. SAMUELS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 18, 2007

Updated: 12/17/2007 11:33 pm

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For more than a century Bayshore Boulevard has been Tampa's showcase, its jewel, touted as having one of the world's longest uninterrupted sidewalks.

It's where the who's who of this city live, run, play and parade.

Visitors and residents marvel at the waterfront views, the exquisite homes and all those walkers, joggers, bikers and in-line skaters using the sidewalk night and day, rain or shine.

"It's beautiful," first-grade teacher Jaclyn Dotson said before starting a regular afternoon run. "A beautiful view. And everyone is here for the same thing."

At the Colonnade restaurant, a Bayshore landmark since 1935, the hottest ticket in town is still a window seat.

"Everybody wants to sit by the window," co-owner Dick Whiteside said. "I wouldn't trade our location for anybody's. To me, it's the best location in Tampa."

With its iconic balustrade hugging the water and plantation-style homes set back from Hillsborough Bay, Bayshore was the vision of two native Tennesseans, Col. Alfred Reuben Swann and his business partner, Eugene Holtsinger.

Swann used to winter in Tampa and settled at Bayshore and Gunby Avenue.

"He truly saw the roadway around the shoreline," said his great-granddaughter Mary Brown, who lives a block off Bayshore. "He had the vision to keep that in mind for the public."

By the end of the 19th century, Bayshore had a streetcar line and its first mansion. But it wasn't until the early 1900s that Swann and Holtsinger built the first subdivision, Suburb Beautiful.

Within a few years, Bayshore had become a two-lane brick road, stretching 3.1 miles.

The shoreline remained mainly unchanged until 1921, when a hurricane destroyed most of the road and sea wall. Repairs weren't completed until 1938.

"The way it was then is still pretty much the way it is now," said Brown, who wrote the book "The Bayshore: Boulevard of Dreams" in 1995. "It still has that magnificent view."

It was that vista that mesmerized the young Marilyn Mancuso in the late 1950s. Living in Ybor City, it was a treat for her and her family to look at the bay and the houses.

"On Sundays, when we did not have any place to go, we would drive down Bayshore," she said. "It was like we went somewhere on vacation."

Now she calls it home. Nine years ago, she married Gus Weekley, who lives in the house his mother built on Bayshore in 1924.

The house, which the couple have tried to preserve as closely as possible to its roots, was a farm of sorts for the young Gus Weekley. There were ducks, geese and vegetables, he said.

Weekley would set up a stand outside his house and sell lemonade, mangoes, avocados and citrus.

"I have a lot of nostalgia relating to Bayshore, but I don't live in the past," he said.

Instead, he's concerned about speeding cars, drunks trying to get past his gate during Bayshore's annual Gasparilla parade and high-rises being built.

Bayshore's first condominium was the Harbour House at Howard Avenue, built in 1964. Many more have risen, and residents of single-family homes fear their street will become another Miami Beach.

The city has sought to counter development and traffic concerns.

After a jogger was killed by a motorcycle while trying to cross Bayshore in 2004, Mayor Pam Iorio created a safety task force, leading to the installation of a traffic light at Howard and a southbound sidewalk.

Southbound bicycle lanes are proposed, and the city erected decorative signs proclaiming Bayshore a linear park.

The "Guinness Book of Records" does not list sidewalk lengths, although the city claims Bayshore has one of the longest. The 3.1 miles of uninterrupted sidewalk stretch from Gandy Boulevard to the Davis Islands Bridge.

This month, the city moved forward with designating Bayshore a scenic corridor and regional attractor, paving the way for development guidelines to limit building heights.

The Weekleys and other residents remain vigilant.

"I feel like I am a guardian," Marilyn Weekley said. "I feel like this is something I enjoy and it's something I am in debt to.

"It's always been a special place," she said. "You're looking at something so beautiful, so different."

Researcher Melanie Coon contributed to this report. Reporter Michael H. Samuels can be reached at (813) 835-2109 or msamuels@tampatrib.com.

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