The Seminole Heights Baptist Church began in 1921 in a white frame building at the corner of Hillsboro and Miami Avenues. This structure, with its 130-foot-tall steeple, opened in 1949. Over time, membership faltered, and upkeep costs challenged the remaining congregation.

In 2020, Nashville-based HCA Healthcare purchased the church’s 3.5-acre campus for $6.9 million. It included the shuttered Tamp Fire Department Co. No. 7 firehouse.  Plans to build a free-standing emergency room as part of the Memorial Hospital of Tampa network meant demolishing the church but preserving the firehouse. While the community was upset, the building came down just shy of its 100th birthday after preservationists failed to have it deemed a local historic landmark. As a last-ditch effort, a memento of the top 43 feet of the steeple was saved and moved to the parking lot across from Ella’s Americana Folk Art Café a few blocks away in Seminole Heights. It has since been painted with murals and is visible on the west side of Nebraska Avenue. As of late 2022, the firehouse looks untouched and dilapidated, storing flammable chemicals and old church pews inside, as seen through broken windows.

In late 2024, Ella’s American Folk Art Cafe announced it was closing. The disposition of the steeple has not been announced.

 © Chip Weiner. All rights reserved