Snell Arcade in St. Petersburg, Florida

The Snell Arcade is a Mediterranean Revival office and retail building at 405 Central Avenue, on the northwest corner of Fourth Street and Central Avenue in downtown St. Petersburg.

It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and on the city's own register. The National Park Service lists it as reference 82001037, listed on November 4, 1982, with Rutland Building as its other name and architecture as its area of significance (National Park Service, National Register listings). The city's list of St. Petersburg National Register properties shows the Snell Arcade at 405 Central Ave, listed in November 1982 (City of St. Petersburg, National Register list), and its local register shows it as file HPC #86-08, designated in June 1986 (City of St. Petersburg, local register).

The building's 1982 nomination describes a structure with virtually the same footprint and form it had when built, notable for polychromatic terra cotta, a copper canopy over the first floor and Florida keystone on the exterior (NPS nomination, Snell Arcade). It fills its 100 by 130 foot lot, and the basement runs under the sidewalk onto city property, by 12 feet 6 inches on the east side (NPS nomination).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the National Park Service listing file and 1982 nomination for the Snell Arcade, the city's two historic register lists and the State Archives of Florida postcard record.

The National Register nomination dates the Snell Arcade to 1928, while a State Archives of Florida catalog note says it was built in 1926, so the official records disagree.

The nomination gives 1928 as the building's date and says construction started in the late spring of 1928, with a push to finish for the coming fall tourist season (NPS nomination). It quotes a St. Petersburg Times report of October 14, 1928, that large crews were working night and day shifts encasing the steel in reinforced concrete (NPS nomination). The Florida Memory record for a postcard of the building, from the State Archives of Florida, says that the building, also known as the Rutland Building, was built in 1926 and later added to the National Register on November 4, 1982 (Florida Memory, postcard PC07605). Both are official records, and neither one addresses the other's date.

The architects were Richard Kiehnel and M. Leo Elliott of Kiehnel & Elliott in Miami, and the builder was E.B. Ring of St. Petersburg (NPS nomination). The nomination calls it a nine story commercial building and the last significant structure built in St. Petersburg before the 1920s boom tapered off (NPS nomination). It frames that boom with numbers: city building permits totaled $25,005,000 in 1925 and fell to $15,720,000 the following year (NPS nomination). The city's own history page says the 1920s brought the state's first big growth boom, and that the real estate boom crashed, with large Public Works Administration projects helping the city recover in the 1930s (City of St. Petersburg, History of St. Pete).

The economic collapse that followed also left the Snell Arcade unfinished. The plans called for a second tower on the northeast corner, 30 feet taller than the first, and the foundation and two extra elevator pits were built to carry it, but the second tower was never built, which the nomination puts down to the onset of the nationwide economic slump of the 1930s (NPS nomination).

Snell was a St. Petersburg real estate developer, born in Kentucky in 1869, who commissioned the arcade after developing neighborhoods such as Snell Isle, North Shore and Granada Terrace.

The nomination says Snell first bought property on a vacation to St. Petersburg, returned to live in the city by 1904 and began his second profession, real estate development, in 1905 (NPS nomination). It credits him with developing most of the property east of Fourth Street from Fifth Avenue North to the northern limit of Snell Isle, much of the land around Mirror Lake and Crescent Lake, and neighborhoods he named Bayfront, North Shore and Granada Terrace (NPS nomination). Snell Isle, begun in 1925 as a series of homes in Spanish and Italian styles, was one of his greatest developments, in the nomination's words (NPS nomination).

For the arcade site, Snell bought a two-story wooden structure in 1920 for $100,000 (NPS nomination). The nomination links the building's ornament to his travels in Europe, where he gathered ideas and artifacts for St. Petersburg buildings (NPS nomination).

Snell's own name is on another city landmark: the C. Perry Snell House at 501 Second St S was designated in December 1994 as HPC #94-09 (City of St. Petersburg, local register).

The Snell Arcade's most notable feature is its glazed terra cotta skin, cream colored with ornament in cobalt blue and yellow, above a base of Florida keystone.

The nomination says few other buildings in St. Petersburg used terra cotta as the skin of the building (NPS nomination). Keystone covers the walls up to the second floor line, and the store fronts on Central Avenue and Fourth Street originally had pink Georgia Etowah marble bulkheads (NPS nomination). An ornately designed copper canopy, 10 feet wide, runs along the entire south and east facades (NPS nomination).

The Snell Arcade tower is Gothic in character: it rises from the fourth floor, steps in at the seventh floor and ends in a two-story penthouse crowned by an octagonal, copper covered cupola with a copper finial (NPS nomination). The parapet carries 25 pilasters topped with finials, and the 1982 survey counted 231 windows (NPS nomination). Inside, the significant features were the arcaded retail space, mosaic and tile decoration and elaborate stone and iron work (NPS nomination). The third floor terrace was first used as a restaurant built around an interior courtyard (NPS nomination).

For a visitor on the sidewalk, the 1982 nomination noted that the tower shows in the background behind the Post Office when heading south on Fourth Street, and that it can be seen from the west (NPS nomination).

The Snell Arcade passed through Walgreen and Company and then Hubert Rutland before a 1980s restoration brought back its original name.

Walgreen and Company bought the building in 1937 for $500,000, chiselled off the terra cotta Snell Arcade name over the entrance and installed the name Walgreen Arcade in ceramic tile (NPS nomination). The store added a seventy foot streamlined fountain that could serve 150 people at once, and turned the basement into a coffee shop and tea room seating 325 (NPS nomination). Walgreen owned the building until 1943, when Hubert Rutland bought it; the National Park Service and the State Archives of Florida both record Rutland Building as the building's other name (NPS nomination; National Park Service; Florida Memory).

The nomination says the Rutland Building owner was responsible for more destructive alterations than any other owner, and dates these changes to 1950: the keystone facade and copper canopy were painted over, the south arched entry to the arcade was removed, and a floor was put through the middle of the two-story arcade space (NPS nomination). A State Archives of Florida postcard, published not before 1936, is catalogued with Lewis Art Galleries as a subject, and its accompanying note advertises the Robert Lewis Gift and Art Stores at Central Ave. at Fourth St. (Florida Memory).

Restoration began in November 1980. Paint was stripped from the copper canopy between November 1980 and April 1981, the lower facade on Fourth Street and Central Avenue was replaced with new keystone and glass store fronts, and the 1982 nomination put the restoration cost at approximately $2.5 million (NPS nomination). The listing on the National Register followed on November 4, 1982 (National Park Service).

Local landmark status is what protects the Snell Arcade from demolition or unsympathetic changes; National Register listing alone does not restrict a private owner.

The City of St. Petersburg explains that listing in the National Register does not place restrictions on a private owner's future alterations unless federal assistance is involved, while designation as a local landmark gives a degree of protection from unnecessary demolition or unsympathetic alterations by private owners (City of St. Petersburg, Historic Preservation). City historic preservation staff review proposed changes to locally designated properties by issuing Certificates of Appropriateness (City of St. Petersburg). The Snell Arcade was designated in 1986, the first year on the city's list of local designations (City of St. Petersburg, local register).

The state handles the National Register side. Florida's Division of Historical Resources says Florida has more than 1,700 properties and districts listed on the National Register, and that Florida nominations go to the National Park Service through the division (Florida Division of Historical Resources). The Snell Arcade nomination was prepared by the Florida Department of State's Division of Archives, History and Records Management and dated August 13, 1982 (NPS nomination).

The building has a listed neighbor. The U.S. Post Office at the southwest corner of First Avenue North and Fourth Street North has been on the National Register since April 1975 (City of St. Petersburg, National Register list), and the Open Air Post Office at 400 First Ave N was locally designated in May 1986 (City of St. Petersburg, local register); the Snell Arcade nomination notes that the Post Office is Mediterranean Revival too (NPS nomination). The Digital Towns St. Petersburg landmarks hub covers the other downtown landmarks.