Equestrian St. Petersburg


Showing off a winner! Equestrian scene in St. Petersburg, 1912.
When St. Pete was incorporated as a town in 1892, one of the first ordinances passed prohibited horse racing, or even riding too rapidly, through town. Some school children were transported in horse-drawn school buses. As historian Fuller wrote, the early city “gentry” as a matter of status kept a “carriage and pair,” usually tucked away in a stable at the rear of their residential lot.

Postcard of Central Avenue looking west about 1905. Detroit Hotel is on the right with horse and buggy in foreground. Inscription reads, “Wide streets, good water and sewage, a healthy town, mostly Southern people.” – Michaels Family Collection
It is not known whether Bert Blocker had his own blacksmith or farrier on site at his Livery and Transfer Company, but if not, there was at least one not too far away. That was Henry R. Binnie’s blacksmith shop, originally located near the southeast corner of 3rd Street and 1st Avenue North, and later relocated a little farther east on 1st Avenue. Later still, a new blacksmith shop was built of brick in 1912. This structure still stands, facing the alley behind the Bishop Hotel at 256 1st Avenue North, now operated as MacDinton’s Irish Pub and the Bishop Tavern. Binnie learned blacksmithing as a teen from his stepfather, Abner Farthing. Farthing and Binnie came to St. Petersburg in 1899, and the two opened Farthing and Binnie Blacksmithing in 1900. Farthing died in 1901, and Binnie continued to operate the blacksmith business on that site into the 1920s, but by 1925 had shifted the focus of the business from horseshoes and carriages to locksmithing, key making, umbrella and bicycle repair, and general garage work. In 1912, he built a hotel and rooming house that was named after him adjacent to the black-smith shop. Binnie’s family lived above the shop. A second structure was added to the east in 1921. The complex was also known as the Robinson Hotel and Northern Hotel. In 1948, the hotel was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Roy C. Bishop, and thereafter became known as the Bishop Hotel.
City pioneer Mattie Lou Cherbonneaux recalled, “Papa had Mr. Binnie shoe his horses and mend his plows and other farm equipment. It was exciting to watch Mr. Bennie, clad in a leather apron, blowing the coals red hot with the bellows, grasping the hot metal with tongs and hammering it into the desired shape with a steady, musical rhythm.” The Bishop Hotel was recently recommended for desig-nation as a city landmark by St. Petersburg Preservation and the City.

Workers and wagons at Blocker Livery & Transfer Co., 1910. Courtesy St. Petersburg Museum of History.

Blacksmith Henry R. Binnie’s hotel on First Avenue North. Part of the hotel was first built in 1912. It was added to in 1921. A blacksmith shop was located behind the hotel facing the alley. The French Colonial Revival iron work on the balcony was added mid-century. The distinctive neon sign dates from the 1956. The building is currently the home of Mac Dinton’s Irish Pub and the Bishop Tavern.
In his 1979 memoir Things I Remember, he recounted many of his experiences with horses and early St. Pete. As a sophomore in high school, about 1912, he worked as a bill collector for the Blocker Livery and Transfer Company. He remembered the names of all their horses, particularly Rex and Chief who were hired on one occasion to haul a carriage on a fishing trip to Maximo Point. Unfortunately the horses were tied to a tree near a yellow jacket nest. The horses were stung, became crazed, broke their tie ropes and lit out through the woods. One of the horses made it back to the Blocker stable with his collar and a bit of harness. The other died somewhere south of Lake Maggoire.

Serendipity Farm, one of the many fine equestrian facilities located in the vicinity of Pinellas Park, north of St. Petersburg.
His equipment was one blanket; a mosquito bar 6´ long, 2´ wide, and 18´´ high; one sheet; a riding slicker; saddle bags for rations and a bag of grain; a nose bag to feed the horse; and a tie rope for the horse. The trip lasted three weeks and he and his friend traveled 325 miles. They made stops at Punta Gorda, Avon Park, and Arcadia, where they ate dinner in the jail. The sheriff was a friend of the Starkey family. “We got the red-carpet treatment in a county jail after three-and-a-half days riding and eating out of saddlebags. That was one of the best meals two boys ever ate.” They then rode to the vicinity of Lake Okeechobee and Fish Eating Creek.
While Starkey was an experienced rider as a youth, he did not actually own a horse until about 1920, when he bought a blue roan from a family living near today’s Clam Bayou and Maximo Moorings neighborhoods. Recalling this, he observed that he “was never very excited about a new automobile. I don’t care what model it is, there are thousands more just like it. A horse is different. They are somewhat like people. No two of them are exactly alike. A good cow-horse is a pleasure to own and ride. Some are real smart and some a little bit dumb.” He bought his first car a year after he bought his first horse: a Model T Roadster, “brand new and shiny.”

Four modes of transportation—bicycles, horses and buggies, automobiles, and streetcar. Looking east on Central Avenue. Postmarked 1909. – Michaels Family Collection.
Jay Starkey’s daughter, Marion Gay, grew up on the original Starkey ranch, or farm as she called it. It was an isolated place at the time and she recalled she had no one to play with. But, she had her own horse, Tony, “a small Palomino gelding with a beautiful flax mane and tail,” which she frequently rode after school.

Pulley remaining from H. R. Binnie’s blacksmith shop behind the Bishop Hotel on First Avenue N
While the use of horses for everyday transportation in St. Petersburg generally died out by the end of the 1920s, recreational use continued into the 1970s. In 1930 a “Riding Academy” appears in the local directory, the Jungle Riding Academy located at Park Street and 5th Avenue North. The Jungle Academy was still listed in 1936, along with the Cass Riding Academy at 254 16th Avenue South. By 1947, the only listing under Riding Academy is for the Dandy Jim Ranch at 1025 52nd Street South. Two later popular riding stables were Sky-Brook, located on the site of the former K-Mart Building, now Value Fair Market, near the corner of 38th Avenue South and Highway 19 (34th Street); and Pine View, located near the corner of 54th Avenue South and 31st Street. Sky-Brook boasted approxi-mately 30 stalls and maintained perhaps 50 horses. In the 1960s, the area surrounding Sky-Brook Stables was still very wild and horses could be ridden to Boca Ciega Bay and east in the vicinity of 54th Avenue South. Pam Gaylor, who boarded her horse Twilight at Sky-Brook, has many fond memories of that time. She occasionally rode her horse to her home in the Bahama Shores neighborhood near Little Bayou, a distance of nearly five miles. One Halloween, she rode her horse about the neighborhood costumed as the Headless Horseman. A number of persons in the Pinellas Point area at that time maintained personal horses and had their own stables.
Horseback riding in St. Pete is now largely reduced to parades. In 2009, the city established a mounted patrol that operates in the downtown on weekends. It is composed of two Percheron-Thoroughbred mixed-breed horses names Brooklyn and Jacob. The horses were the gift of the Boston Police. The nearest thing we have comparable to the Blocker Livery and Transfer Co. is St. Petersburg Carriages which maintains five carriages – including a Cinderella fairytale carriage – near the History Museum. The carriages are driven about the downtown as an attraction. The horses include a Clydesdale, a Belgian Cross, and two Percherons. Today many riding programs and boarding stables are still available, but one must go to the vicinity of Pinellas Park to find them.

Horses and buggies and automobiles on 4th Street looking south. Image circa 1908. – Michaels Family Collection.
Sources used for this article include: Mattie Lou Cherbonneaux, Mamaw’s Memoirs (1979); City of St. Petersburg, “Staff Report, Bishop Hotel (HPC 13-90300002)”; Rita Slaght Gould, Pioneer St. Petersburg Life In And Around 1888 “Out Near the Back of Beyond,” (1987); St. Petersburg Times, Feb. 23, 1983; Jay B. Starkey, Sr., Things I Remember, Southwest Florida Management District (1980); David A. Watt, Diary.