Carew Ave. was named after Dr. Edmund S. Carew, a Tampa pioneer and early and controversial land owner. This site was the place of Fort Brooke, an American Outpost built in 1824. The Platt Street Bridge opened in 1926, joining Carew Ave on the east and Platt Street on the west side of the Hillsborough River. The Lee Baking Company center opened in 1923 for $125,000 and reportedly had the capacity to make thirty to thirty-five thousand loaves of bread per day. The company was purchased by Southern Baking Company, which built a larger plant on Dakota and Horatio streets in south Tampa.  The Lee building later housed the Vernor Ginger Ale Bottling Co. in the 1940s.

Later in the century, the area, primarily a warehouse district, declined. A turning point was when the Tampa Port Authority acquired the waterfront property on Garrison and Ybor Channels in the mid-1980s, and the development of the Channel District began. The $140-million Tampa Convention Center opened in 1990, constructing a tunnel over the street, now named Channelside Drive.

 © Chip Weiner. All rights reserved