Worthingston’s Bakery and Allen Hotel at 214 Tyler Street are emblematic of how businesses structured their mixed-use buildings in the 1920s. Retail businesses were on the ground floor and residential space was on the top. It’s hard to see, but there’s also a barbershop next to the bakery here offering shaves for 15¢. By 1925, Worthingston’s had closed. Long-time Tampa residents, especially musicians, will remember this building as Cutro’s Music, which opened in the early 1960s and closed in the mid-1990s.  In 2009, attorney Malka Isaak bought the building to hold, waiting for a neighborhood renaissance.

In 2019, Isaak palled up with Green Iguana owner Rick Calderoni to open a more affordable café for locals and wanted to lease part of the park next door from the city for a patio. However, city planners were just about to wrap up a $100,000, two-year plan to redesign the adjoining Herman Massey Park, turning it into a needed dog park. Isaak’s team objected, asserting that dog droppings beside people eating don’t mix. She won the battle, but the café never opened. Today, it sits boarded up with vestiges of Cutro’s Music still on the window, along with graffiti. The long-awaited renaissance of the neighborhood began two years ago on nearby Franklin St.

 © Chip Weiner. All rights reserved