The Bro Bowl in Tampa, Florida

The Bro Bowl is a concrete skateboard bowl in Perry Harvey Sr. Park on the northern edge of downtown Tampa, opened by the City of Tampa in 1978 as the first public skatepark in Florida.

USF News reports that skateboarders gave the bowl its name, though no one seems to recall why, and that in 2013 it became the first skatepark added to the National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service record lists it as the Perry Harvey Sr. Park Skateboard Bowl, NRIS 13000811, at 900 E. Scott St. in Tampa, with 1978 as its significant year.

The bowl that skaters ride today is a second version. The original was removed during the redesign of Perry Harvey Sr. Park, and a near-replica built from scans of the old bowl opened at the new park in 2016. The City of Tampa park page calls it Bro Bowl 2.0 and says it has all of the features of the original plus lots of ramps, stairs and ledges for tricks.

The Bro Bowl began in 1975, when a USF graduate student who also worked as a City of Tampa parks and recreation planner proposed a safe public place to skate.

Skateboarding had reached Tampa early. USF News reports that in 1962 newspapers credited USF students with bringing skateboarding to Tampa, and that in 1975 campus contests included tricks. That same year the planner, then earning a master's degree in urban planning at USF, was inspired by children skating dangerously on a hill in Sulphur Springs.

His design covered 6,500 square feet, with ramps and bowls shaped to mimic ocean waves. Because the City of Tampa owned it, USF News notes, there was no admission fee, unlike other skateparks of the era that charged for entry. The city opened the facility in 1978 as part of downtown Tampa's Perry Harvey Sr. Park. WUSF reported in 2013 that it was the first public, free skate park in the State of Florida where riders skated at their own risk, and one of the last skate parks from that period still standing anywhere in the country.

The National Park Service record names the design firms of record as IPDS Ltd. Planning/Design Group and Angle and Scmid, and lists entertainment and recreation, architecture and engineering as the Tampa bowl's areas of significance. USF News adds that the park became a hangout for local skaters and a destination for top talent nationwide, and that its fame soared in 2003 when it was featured in the video game Tony Hawk's Underground.

The original Bro Bowl was a concrete course covering less than an acre, with a steep downhill run that led to a curved dish at the bottom, according to its National Register nomination.

The 2013 nomination file held by the National Park Service describes the Tampa bowl as part downhill slalom, part swimming pool and part ditch, varying in depth from about one to six feet. It says the City of Tampa built it as a recreational facility for inner city youth, and that it was in good condition thanks to city maintenance and the upkeep of the local skateboarders who used it.

The nomination places the bowl at the western edge of Perry Harvey Sr. Park, which is bounded by North Orange Avenue on the west, Scott Street on the north, Central Avenue on the east and East Harrison Street on the south. It also records that the park occupies the former site of Tampa's African American business and entertainment district on Central Avenue, and that the surrounding area, known as The Scrub, was cleared in the 1950s for the Central Park Village housing project of 1954. The construction of Interstate 4 and the 1968 Jefferson Street extension to Interstate 275, the file says, severed the district economically from the rest of the city. The nomination describes the park's location as the critical intersection of downtown Tampa, Ybor City, the Channel District and Tampa Heights.

The Bro Bowl reached the National Register in 2013 through a preservation push led by a USF skateboarder, and it was the first skatepark in the nation to be listed.

USF News reports that the effort was led by a USF undergraduate and avid skateboarder who later earned a doctoral degree in modern U.S. history from the university. The NPS record for the Perry Harvey Sr. Park Skateboard Bowl lists event and architecture or engineering as its criteria and a period of significance running from 1975 to 2000, and the record is dated October 7, 2013.

The listing set up a conflict in Perry Harvey Sr. Park, which the city was planning to redevelop to honor the history of the Black-owned businesses of Central Avenue. WUSF reported in November 2013 that the bowl, then 35 years old, had recently made the National Register, and that because the park project would use federal money, the city had to plan for both the new park and the historic bowl. USF News records that just a year after the listing, the Bro Bowl faced demolition as part of the park's redesign.

The Bro Bowl was rebuilt in 2016 as a near-replica made from scans of the original, which USF faculty recorded before the old Tampa bowl was demolished.

USF News says members of the USF community stepped in again: before demolition, faculty 3D-scanned the skatepark, and the scans were used to reconstruct a near-replica in 2016 at the new Perry Harvey Sr. Park. Bay News 9 reported that the City of Tampa had to navigate state and federal requirements before it could touch the listed bowl, and that University of South Florida researchers laser-scanned the basin so the city could create a close to perfect copy, though riders said it was not exact.

The city describes the result as Bro Bowl 2.0 and lists it among the park's features, alongside basketball courts and the Perry Harvey statue. On the City of Tampa park page, the skate park is described as keeping all of the features of the original while adding ramps, stairs and ledges, so the replica bowl now sits inside a larger street course.

The original Bro Bowl survives in two places: as the scanned replica in Perry Harvey Sr. Park and as concrete sections at the Tampa Bay History Center.

USF News reports that a USF alumnus helped the Tampa Bay History Center acquire three concrete sections of the original bowl; one is displayed at the history center and the other two are in storage. The replica is at Perry Harvey Sr. Park, 900 E Scott St, Tampa, which the city lists as open from sunrise to 10 pm, with park administration at (813) 274-8615 and special events at (813) 274-8854. The city park page does not list an admission fee.

The park around the bowl tells the other history the Perry Harvey project was built to honor. The City of Tampa lists James Simon's gateway sculptures of musicians, dancers and a jukebox, which highlight music in the historic Central Avenue Business District; Michael Parker's Leaders Row; Rufus Seder's Lifetiles, built from historic photographs; and fourteen large inset pavers that tell the chronological story of The Scrub and Central Avenue. The park also has three full-size basketball courts, a festival lawn, an interactive fountain with lights and music, and a NEOS 360 play system.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, on the City of Tampa Perry Harvey Sr. Park page, the NPS NPGallery record and nomination file for NRIS 13000811 and the 2025 USF News skateboarding history, with the 2013 WUSF and 2016 Bay News 9 reports used only alongside them.