I recently received an email from Rachel of the writing and marketing department at Turner Publishing Company. She offered to send me a new book they publish called Historic Photos Of Tampa (text and captions by: Ralph Brower).
She was interested in having me review the book on this very blog. I was flattered and enthusiastically agree to this arrangement.
The description of this book on the Turner web site is as follows:
Historic Photos of Tampa captures this city's journey through still photography from the Burgett Brothers Photographic Archives held at the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library. From the late 1800s, the Depression era, and to the building of a modern metropolis, Historic Photos of Tampa follows life, government, education, and events throughout Tampa's rich history.
The book arrived a few days ago and here is what I have to say about it.
Upon taking it out of the box I found it to have pleasing dimensions and good quality binding. The pages were just the right weight and the images printed on them were very nice. There are over 180 pages of images depicting Tampa's rise from it's natural and rugged past in the first chapter, "The beginning of Cigar City 1800 - 1899" to the last chapter, "World War II and the Baby Boom 1940 -1959".
I thoroughly enjoyed perusing the pages and seeing how much has changed and how many of the building I could identify that still stand today. As a citizen of the Tampa Bay area for most of my life it was fascinating to make the connection between the present and the not so distant past. The text and captions in this book although not exhaustive are pleasingly informative and brief and the images from the Burgett Brothers are a delight to view. The only thing I did not see that would have added to this book are a few historic maps of Tampa placed strategically in each chapter chronicling our fine cities growth and giving the reader bearing on the images being viewed.
This is a neat image of Davis Islands and the Mirasol Hotel which still proudly stands today on the island.
The Palmerin and Mirasol buildings on Davis Islands. I saw these two last week from the very same vantage point and it is amazing to see them standing among all new buildings like they are frozen in time.
I was just on the grounds of The University of Tampa here is an image of the grounds from the book when it was the Henry B. Plant Tampa Bay Hotel.
This book will transform the way you see the city of Tampa and that is a wonderful thing!
