St. Pete is celebrated for its fabulous weather, beautiful vistas, world-class food scene, and thriving cultural atmosphere but the people of St. Pete truly make this city something special. In appreciation, each month Green Bench shines a light on one of the many people that make St. Pete unique.
This month we turn our gaze to the past as we take a closer look at Frank Allston Davis, one of the city’s most ardent and visionary boosters.
Teacher, Salesman, Publisher, and Budding Electric Entrepreneur
Like most early 20th-century boosters, Davis was not a native Floridian. Born, raised, and educated in rural Vermont, he began teaching at 17. By age 20, he had discovered a talent for salesmanship, which took him from selling lawnmowers to books. By 1880, he had built a renowned Philadelphia-based publishing company specializing in medical books and periodicals. His titles included a popular study proclaiming Pinellas County as the “healthiest spot on Earth.” Hoping to ease the pain of his rheumatism, he visited Tarpon Springs in 1890 to see for himself and quickly became a believer. Intent on making it his new home, he invested his own money to bring an electric-light plant to town. The locals, however, resisted this new and, to some, frightening technology. In 1897 Davis brought his lighting plant and vision for the future to St. Pete.
Lights, Trolleys, Steamships, and “The Pleasure City of the South”
The wood-powered 50-watt power station opened in St. Pete in August 1897 to much celebration. All were invited to the “Grand Gala Day on the Gulf” to cheer on the progress and prosperity the electric plant represented. Not content to light the existing streets, Davis envisioned an expanding metropolis fueled by electric-powered roads. Determined, he made deals and raised funds until he made it happen. When the electric trolley debuted in 1904, his diligence did not go unnoticed. “Stockholders may call it the St. Petersburg & Gulf Railway … but to the people here it will always be the F.A. Davis road” made possible because of his “tireless persistence” during “every step of the progress.” In pursuit of further expansion, Davis bought land for development and built the Electric Pier, where people could socialize as well as greet and board his new 500-passenger steamboat. He returned to his sales roots and published a 64-page glossy showcase of St. Pete, designed to lure investors and visitors to the Sunshine City. By 1907, however, outside forces, including the national economic panic, clipped his wings. After relinquishing control of many of his holdings, Davis tried to start again in Pinellas Park but was unable to repeat his earlier successes.
“Unending Zeal Made St. Petersburg a Real City”
By 1915, Davis had returned to Philadelphia, where he died in 1917 at age 66. In St. Petersburg, he was memorialized in a front-page news story that hailed him as the “father of the city” and the first man to have a “vision of the present and future metropolis.” He was remembered for his “almost superhuman efforts” to make “that vision into fact.” Thirty years after his death, local historian Karl Grismer echoed that sentiment when he described Davis as the man that “put St. Petersburg twenty years ahead in its development” by giving it “the things which made possible its future growth and enabled it to spurt ahead of other resort cities.” Nearly 120 years after his electric road was inaugurated, we remember F.A. Davis as a man whose “unending zeal” played a major role in making St. Pete “a real city.”
