Featured image: Portrait of MB Welch that mentions his buildings and his hobbies. All photos courtesy of Amy (Welch) Walker.

During the 1920s land boom, St. Petersburg expanded at a pace that reshaped the city almost overnight. Across that growing landscape, contractor M. B. Welch was at work, building not just in one area but throughout the city, converting plans into places people would live, gather, and invest in. The Old Northeast holds one important concentration of his surviving homes, but his reach extended well beyond it – to Downtown St. Pete, Grenada Terrace, and Crescent Heights, to St. Pete Beach, Disston Heights, Crescent Lake, and the Pink Streets.… Read More

Featured image: Murawski lab members spent a lot of time organizing samples post-fire. Courtesy of Layne Leggett.

As smoke rose over downtown on Saturday, May 2, marine science graduate student Layne Leggett stood in the Al Lang stadium watching a fire she didn’t yet realize would change her future.

By the end of the night, the University of South Florida’s Marine Science Laboratory in downtown St. Petersburg was destroyed.

Two months later, the community has come together to raise more than $400,000 and relocate the people and samples displaced in the fire. 

What Happened? 

On Saturday, May 2, dozens of media outlets documented the massive fire at the Marine Science Laboratory at USFSP.… Read More

Following the red brick roads, most paved with Augusta Block, will not get you to the land of Oz. But it will lead to an enchanting walk in time back to early St. Petersburg. That’s what Polita Glynn does with her recent film, The Brick Roads of St. Petersburg.

Glynn is a documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, and creative storyteller, with a background in American studies and history. Glynn says she has “always been drawn to the past,” and is “enthusiastic about storytelling as a way to get people to see our community and city with different perspective.” She studied film and television as a way to tell those stories. … Read More