OLD FLORIDA ON THE GULF - 'Everything you need to know'

Guide Publishing Company

Weekly Guide: St. Petersburg and Its Gulf Beaches, 'The Holiday Isles' [1953]

St. Petersburg, Florida: Guide Publishing Company, Week of November 8, 1953.

A WEEK IN 1953 ST. PETERSBURG. OLD FLORIDA BEFORE THE SKYWAY — BEACHES & ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS
A wonderfully period-specific tourist guide to St. Petersburg and the Gulf Beaches, published for visitors during the city's postwar tourism boom. Rather than a retrospective travel book, this is an ephemeral working guide — where to stay, what to see, local organizations, attractions, transportation information, maps, and advertisements, all current to a single week in November 1953.

Its appeal lies particularly in the accumulation of local detail: Al Lang Field, the Gulf Beaches marketed as the 'Holiday Isles,' hotels and tourist accommodations, civic organizations, causeways, public buildings, and attractions including the Florida Wild Animal and Reptile Ranch.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS: MADE FOR THE TOURIST.
Bright green and red pictorial cover combining beach photography with fishing, boating, golf, and swimming motifs. Illustrated stapled wrappers, 6 by 9 inches, 24 pages. Illustrated throughout in black and white with photographs, maps, display advertising, directories, and visitor information. Includes a Pinellas County map showing St. Petersburg, Tampa, Clearwater, Gulfport, Pass-a-Grille, Indian Rocks, Tarpon Springs, and the connecting causeways. Rear wrapper carries a full-page advertisement for the Florida Wild Animal and Reptile Ranch, incorporating a photograph of flamingos and a mail-back panel.

CONDITION: SURVIVING TOURIST EPHEMERA.
Moderate handling and rubbing to wrappers with scattered creasing, small edge tears, and wear along the spine fold and extremities. Interior pages show expected light age-toning and handling. Stapled binding remains intact. Rear mailing panel was used and retains its three-cent Thomas Jefferson postage stamp, cancellation, manuscript address, and brief manuscript notation.

FLORIDA TOURISM SIGNIFICANCE—BEFORE THE SKYWAY CHANGED THE MAP.
Published in November 1953, this guide captures the St. Petersburg area immediately before a major transformation in regional transportation and tourism. The original Sunshine Skyway would open in 1954, while this guide's Pinellas County map still presents Tampa Bay through the older network of roads and causeways.

The contents document the established attractions and rhythms of the pre-interstate tourist city: beaches, hotels, fishing, golf, civic clubs, Al Lang Field — identified as the spring-training home of the St. Louis Cardinals — and roadside attractions.

THE LOST ROADSIDE FLORIDA.
Especially evocative is the rear-cover advertisement for the Florida Wild Animal and Reptile Ranch on Fourth Street North, promoting flamingos, alligators, reptiles, tropical birds and performing chimpanzees. The attraction was operating in St. Petersburg by the 1940s and closed in 1959 as tourist traffic patterns shifted.

SUBJECTS: St. Petersburg Florida, Pinellas County, Gulf Beaches, Florida Tourism, Holiday Isles, Al Lang Field, Florida Wild Animal and Reptile Ranch, Roadside Attractions, 1950s Florida, Tampa Bay, Gulf Coast, Travel Advertising, Florida Ephemera, Travel Guides, Tourist Ephemera, Local History, Advertising, Roadside Americana

Item #22444

Price: $21.95