I usually post photographs and not newspaper clippings, but this one was just too remarkable to pass up. In 1945, parking in downtown was a problem due to all the retail and businesses. At the same time, the county was looking to replace the courthouse. From the go-big-or-go-home department comes architect John Phillips- who also designed the Ringling Museum and was one of the architects for New York Grand Central Station. He proposed a project that would have changed the face of downtown. At the time, the land Curtis Hixon Park sits on was still the Atlantic Railroad yard and stretched from Cass Street to what is now Kennedy. It was a major stop for the import and export of goods on rail to Tampa. Ashley Dr was lined with warehouses and shipping businesses on the west side.

Phillips proposed three major changes: a new six or eight-story courthouse at the apex of the railyard and the Lafayette (now Kennedy) bridge, where Rivergate Tower (beer can building) is now. Further, he would build an esplanade, an elevated walkway, from the new courthouse, over Ashley Dr, all the way to Franklin St. It would end about where the front of TPD headquarters is now (former Marine Bank building). Lykes Gaslight Park was a regular city block then, not the park we see today. He wanted to rip through buildings to construct the elevated walkway. The esplanade would be fronted by new shops.

Lastly, the most grandiose part of his plan was to build an elevated road along the riverfront, over the railyard, constructed to take traffic from the south at Platt Street Bridge/Bayshore to the north of downtown. Instead of the Riverwalk, we’d have a river highway that ran the length of the banks of the Hillsborough River downtown. There would be an elevated walkway over Ashley and Tampa Streets that ran for three blocks, and that entire section of downtown would have a different DNA. While the project never got off the ground, THAT is some cool history!

© Chip Weiner. oldtampaphotos.com