Angelo Massari was an Italian immigrant who came to Tampa in the early 1900s. His first job as a cigar roller allowed him to save enough money to start his business career here, a grocery store specializing in imported foods. He claimed to be the first Italian in Tampa to own a Hupmobile car.  Massari went on to purchase the International Bank and ran it until 1958. The bank was the scene of Tampa’s biggest bank robbery in 1956 when thieves got away with $87,000. It turned out to be an inside job involving a bank employee. Massari died in 1970.

The corner now houses the Park Trammell Building. The concrete modernist structure was built in 1955 and named after the former mayor, governor, and senator of the early 1900s. The nine-story building housed the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce.

In 1966, as Urban Renewal began in downtown, Fortune Street - named for Fortune Taylor, a former slave who sold her homesteaded land to the city- was truncated to build the Ashley ramp to I-275. To preserve her memory, the Tampa City Council voted to change the name of the Laurel Street Bridge to the Madame Fortune Taylor Bridge.

 © Chip Weiner. All rights reserved