How St. Petersburg Began, 1875 to 1903

St. Petersburg began with land John Constantine Williams of Detroit acquired in or shortly after 1875, the year both the City of St. Petersburg and a National Park Service record give for his arrival.

The city's own history dates the purchase to 1875: Williams moved to Tampa that year and bought 2,500 acres of waterfront land that later became St. Petersburg (City of St. Petersburg). The 1975 National Register nomination for his house tells it slightly differently. It says Williams, born in Detroit in 1817, first visited the Pinellas Peninsula in 1875 and shortly thereafter purchased 1,600 acres from the State of Florida and W. F. Sperling (National Park Service).

The two official St. Petersburg accounts agree on 1875 and disagree on acreage, 2,500 against 1,600. Neither gives 1876, so this guide uses 1875 and states both acreage figures; no source fetched for this page explains the gap.

Thirteen years passed between the 1875 purchase and the first train. The city puts that turning point in 1888, when Williams handed part of his tract to Peter Demens and Demens, in return, extended the Orange Belt Railroad to the Williams settlement (City of St. Petersburg).

Before St. Petersburg had a name, people moving to the area in the 1830s and 1840s set up homesteads, planted citrus and other crops, and raised animals.

Pinellas County traces the peninsula name to the Spanish Punta Pinal, point of pines, and says Panfilo de Narvaez discovered the area in 1528 (Pinellas County). The city history adds that the Tampa Bay area was home to generations of Indigenous tribes before the first White settlers arrived, and that people began moving to the area in the 1830s and 1840s, setting up homesteads, planting citrus and other crops, and raising animals (City of St. Petersburg).

After the Civil War more settlers came. John Donaldson and Anna Germain, the first Black settlers in the area, arrived in 1868 and built a homestead near what is now 18th Ave. South and 31st St. South; for 20 years theirs was the only African American family in present day St. Pete (City of St. Petersburg).

Citrus also appears in Safety Harbor's early record. The City of Safety Harbor says that in 1889 a family home was moved from Odet Philippe's citrus grove to Grand Central Avenue, where it held the town's first post office and country store from 1890 (City of Safety Harbor).

The Orange Belt Railroad turned the Williams tract into a town in 1888, when Peter Demens extended the line from Sanford to the west coast of Florida and the first train arrived.

The state historical marker at Demens Landing says Demens was a Russian nobleman, Pyotr Dementyev, who left Russia in 1881, invested in a sawmill and a construction company in Longwood, then took control of the Orange Belt Railroad and extended it from Sanford to the west coast of Florida in 1888 (Florida Division of Historical Resources). The National Park Service nomination gives his name differently, as Peter A. Demens (Petrovich Demenscheff), a Russian exile who headed the Orange Belt and reached an agreement with Williams to develop a townsite on the Gulf (National Park Service); the two official sources disagree on his original name. The first train into St. Petersburg carried empty freight cars and one passenger (City of St. Petersburg).

The street grid dates from the same year. A. L. Hunt, chief engineer of the Orange Belt, surveyed and platted the townsite in 1888, and Williams is said to have insisted on unusually wide streets of 100 feet and a large central park, today Williams Park (National Park Service). Demens built the first railroad pier in 1889 on the waterfront site now called Demens Landing (Florida Division of Historical Resources).

The railroad also brought St. Petersburg its first Black neighborhood. African American men came with the Orange Belt in 1888 to build the beds and lay the rails, and Peppertown, near 3rd and 4th Avenues South just east of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St., is credited as the first of several predominantly Black neighborhoods (City of St. Petersburg).

St. Petersburg is named for Saint Petersburg, Russia, the city Peter Demens chose; the City of St. Petersburg repeats a legend that he won the right to name it in a coin toss with Williams.

The city calls the coin toss a legend and says Williams, having lost it, named the first hotel after his birthplace, Detroit (City of St. Petersburg). The Florida Division of Historical Resources marker skips the coin and says only that Demens extended the railroad to a town he had named St. Petersburg in honor of the capital city of Imperial Russia (Florida Division of Historical Resources).

Credit for the Hotel Detroit is split three ways in the official record. The National Park Service nomination says Williams built the first hotel in St. Petersburg in 1888, named it for his birthplace, and that it still stood, drastically modified, at 215 Central Avenue when the nomination was written (National Park Service). The state marker says Demens built the Detroit and the first railroad depot in 1888 (Florida Division of Historical Resources). A USF postcard record credits the Hotel Detroit at 215 Central Avenue to both men (USF Digital Commons).

The National Park Service nomination and the state marker agree that the Detroit was St. Petersburg's first hotel and date it to 1888; they disagree on who built it, and this guide does not choose between them.

St. Petersburg incorporated as a town on February 29, 1892, and reincorporated as a city in 1903, when it still had only a few hundred residents (City of St. Petersburg).

Williams did not see much of the new town. He began building his Fifth Avenue house in 1891 and died in April 1892, after the February incorporation, having lived in the house only briefly (National Park Service). USF St. Petersburg calls him General John C. Williams, one of the co-founders of St. Petersburg (USF St. Petersburg), and the National Park Service nomination says he is credited with the founding of the City of St. Petersburg (National Park Service).

St. Petersburg was not the first town on the peninsula to incorporate: Pinellas County records Tarpon Springs as its first incorporated city, in 1887 (Pinellas County). Until 1912, St. Petersburg was in Hillsborough County: Pinellas became Florida's 48th county on January 1, 1912, after a local referendum to separate from Hillsborough (Pinellas County).

Five St. Petersburg sites tie back to the years between 1875 and 1903: Williams Park, Demens Landing, the Williams House, the Hotel Detroit site on Central Avenue and the Peppertown area.

Williams Park sits at 4th St. N. and 1st Ave. N., opens 30 minutes before sunrise, closes at 11:00 pm and has a performance stage; the park page lists phone (727) 893-7441 (St. Petersburg Parks and Recreation). The park page says nothing about Williams, so the National Park Service nomination is the source that ties the park to his 1888 plan.

Demens Landing on Bayshore Dr. SE was dedicated as a city park in 1977, and the state marker there went up in 2000 (Florida Division of Historical Resources). The Williams House is not where the National Register nomination put it: that form describes Williams's Fifth Avenue home, and USF St. Petersburg says the house moved to 511 2nd Street South in 1995 and has housed offices for departments such as History and Philosophy (National Park Service; USF St. Petersburg).

On October 13, 2022, USF St. Petersburg announced a preservation grant that, with matching funds, puts more than $561,280 toward restoration, with work that includes foundation work, a new roof and hurricane panels; the article names the decorative railing around the widow's walk among the items that need repair (USF St. Petersburg).