In December 1925, a cold and rainy week cast a rare shadow over the Sunshine City, perhaps foreshadowing the downward slide of local land-speculation schemes. By spring 1927, the whole mess had collapsed. Hoping to revive flattened land sales and the building trades, a variety of business leaders came together to strategize. Near the end of that year, serendipity seemed to shine upon their plans when a marketing ploy brought thousands of eyes and ears to St. Petersburg for a celebration predicted to make “a noise big enough to sound its echoes around the world.”
A Sunshine Offer
The celebration on Dec. 17, 1927, can trace its roots back to September 1910, when Lew Brown, a St. Pete enthusiast and editor of the Evening Independent, launched a promotion in which he gave away newspapers on any day that the sun failed to shine from sunrise to 2:30PM. This “Sunshine Offer,” as Brown dubbed it, was noted in the popular Sunday editions of newspapers nationwide, reaching, according to Brown, as many as 14 million subscribers. As 1927 progressed and the sun continued to show itself, local boosters saw an opportunity to harness those rays for something bigger than a free paper. The Chamber of Commerce, the Advertising Club, and the St. Petersburg Real Estate Board already had joined forces in the wake of collapsing land sales, but the “Why Club” emerged from this collaboration as the power behind their efforts to market the region. Officially an auxiliary of the Chamber, the group required only that its membership was to be a “booster for St. Petersburg and Florida.” As 1927 moved into its final months, the Why Club put together plans for a grand marketing event: “a world-wide celebration of the Sun.”
“Sing the Amazing News”
Confidence was high as the morning edition of the St. Petersburg Times spared no hyperbole in its description of the day’s plans. Promptly at 2:30 p.m. 100,000 attendees would “break loose in glad acclaim.” Church bells, municipal plant whistles, boat horns, chimes on belfries, and the blare of motor horns would “sing the amazing news that the sun has shown for a full 365 days on this city.” The local Masonic Grotto Patrol would then perform an exhibition drill in their “flaming uniforms” before joining a grand parade set to include horses, parade royalty, local dignitaries, tourist clubs, labor and fraternal organizations, high school and junior college students and event organizers. “This is a festival for every man, woman, and child in this city,” publicity materials proclaimed. Reality reminds us this was the Jim Crow era. Black citizens were not invited as parade participants, and numerous articles applauded the plan for the “liberal use of makeup” to turn high school boys into an “escort of slaves” who would bear the throne of the “sun goddess” leading the procession. At parade’s end, the festival would move to segregated Spa Beach, where the Palais Royal Orchestra would entertain while judges decided the winner of the “bathing beauty contest.” Only girls wearing bathing suits were eligible for that silver trophy prize, but a local boy might be crowned an Adonis with a hibiscus wreath. At sunset, the crowds were to reassemble at Williams Park, where “perennial enthusiast” Al Lang would preside over a speech-laden program broadcast over newly installed bandshell loudspeakers that would culminate in the presentation of the H.B. Smitz Citizenship Cup to Brown.
“The Sun Burst into Tears of Joy”
The sun did shine on the day. By early afternoon, a “huge throng” had gathered to celebrate the year of the sun, but the day didn’t quite live up to expectations. Just moments after 2:30 p.m., “the sun burst into tears of joy.” The shower swiftly ended, although rain did fall periodically throughout the day. The crowd was reported to include “the whole population of St. Petersburg … and about 40,000 visitors from 48 states of the Nation, the District of Columbia, Canada, and few other foreign nations,” but the numbers never neared the predicted 100,000 mark. Nonetheless, the “merry making” continued. Reports declared the “parade as unusual as the record that gave it color, music, countless crowds.” A local high school student and daughter of fourth season winter visitors was feted as the “Queen of the Sunshine Beaches.” A bathing beauty was chosen from hundreds of girls parading at the water’s edge during the Beach Festival. The Williams Park program speakers reiterated the message that “now is the time to buy in this city.” Doctor’s orders kept Brown from the event, but his son was on hand to accept his honor. And when rain again interrupted the evening, hundreds of people flooded to the Florida Theatre to end the festivities by watching scenes from the thousands of feet of “cinema film” shot that day. Did it prove, as boosters predicted, to be a “much greater moment to St. Petersburg than many here at home may think”? Perhaps, temporarily. Tourism and confidence did gain some momentum in 1928-29, but land sales remained depressed, and no festive moment could stop the big crash looming on the horizon.
Sources available on request and include extensive coverage by the Tampa Bay Times and prior research by Nevin D. Sitler and Raymond Arsenault.
