Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Florida

The Fort Homer Hesterly Armory is a 1938 to 1941 Art Deco National Guard armory at 522 North Howard Avenue in West Tampa, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and now a Jewish community center.

The National Register nomination describes the West Tampa building as a fine example of Art Deco styling, with a reinforced concrete structure, stucco walls, a central four-story domed section and a five-story stepped tower. The armory remained an active Florida National Guard Armory until October 2004, when the guard moved to a new facility in Pinellas County, and the nomination records that it also served Tampa as a central venue for sporting events, social gatherings and speaking engagements.

The National Park Service NPGallery record lists the property as the Fort Homer W. Hesterly National Guard Armory, National Register Information System ID 13000852, significant for event, person and architecture, in the Art Deco style, with a document date of October 23, 2013. The nomination counts the Tampa building among the largest armories in Florida, with 83,500 feet of interior space, and lists the state as owner of the Howard Avenue property.

Before the armory, the Howard Avenue ground was Benjamin Field, a West Tampa public park that hosted the Rough Riders in 1898 and then wooden National Guard buildings from the 1920s.

The nomination states that the site was part of land owned by George Nelson Benjamin, an orange grower, West Tampa developer, city councilman and businessman, who donated it to West Tampa for use as a public park; Benjamin Park was later renamed Benjamin Field. West Tampa itself was incorporated on May 18, 1895, and stayed independent of Tampa until 1925.

At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, the nomination continues, Benjamin Field was a sand flat without a tree, and it became the camp of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders shortly before they left for Cuba in June 1898. Much of the 1,200-strong regiment camped there while Roosevelt and some general officers stayed at Henry B. Plant's Tampa Bay Hotel, now the University of Tampa. A marker erected by the 1st U.S. Cavalry Regiment Rough Riders, Inc., and capped with the Tampa Historical Society seal stands near the main entrance.

The Guard arrived in the 1920s, and the nomination gives two steps for the Tampa transfer. One passage says that in 1921 the City of Tampa leased the land to the Armory Board for use as a National Guard drill facility; another says that in 1922 the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County donated Benjamin Field to the Florida National Guard. Ten wood frame buildings, including an armory building, drill hall, stables, an officer's club and a boxing ring, appear on the 1931 Tampa Sanborn Map, and the 116th Field Artillery Battalion, the first Tampa unit of the Guard, was officially recognized on January 20, 1924.

The concrete armory was a Works Progress Administration project begun in 1938 and dedicated in Tampa on December 8, 1941, named for the commander who lobbied for it.

According to the nomination, Homer Wynne Hesterly lobbied the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County to sponsor a modern armory for his battalion, and two WPA allocations totaling $361,880 followed, the first appropriated on August 26, 1938. The building was completed in 1941 and dedicated the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Brigadier General Sumter Lowry, his commanding officer, gave the principal address and credited Hesterly's untiring effort for obtaining the West Tampa armory.

Hesterly was born in Georgia on November 16, 1889, earned a civil engineering degree from the Georgia School of Technology and moved to Tampa in 1916, where he enlisted in the Florida National Guard. He served in France during World War I, then accepted the rank of lieutenant colonel to command the 116th Field Artillery Battalion in Tampa, stationed at the armory from 1934 to 1954. The nomination credits him with reorganizing the Florida National Guard in Tampa after that war, records a Bronze Star and the Florida Cross for World War II service in the South Pacific, and gives his death as December 15, 1957.

The Tampa armory is the largest and most elaborate of three Florida National Guard armories built in the Art Deco style between 1935 and 1939, the nomination states.

The nomination describes a recessed main entrance on the east facade along North Howard Avenue with blue tile, four metal doors topped with transom windows, a colorful circular bas-relief of a cross and shield, and the name of the fort in black lettering. A flagpole plaque in front reads Named in honor of Homer W Hesterly, Soldier Patriot and Civic Leader. Behind the five-story tower, the rounded roof of the drill hall forms an arch over the West Tampa structure.

The number of garage bays sets the Tampa building apart: the nomination says no other historic National Guard armory in Florida has the feature, with twelve bays on the south elevation, sixteen on the north and two on the rear. Inside, a drill hall is ringed by storage rooms, offices and a mezzanine walkway on three sides. Alterations were minor by 2013: a one-story concrete addition on the west in 1959, glazed metal doors in the 1960s, and a 1970s drop ceiling that hid the steel bowstring trusses and was slated for removal in the rehabilitation.

The comparison buildings are in Tallahassee and West Palm Beach. The nomination names the 1935 Leon County armory, now the Tallahassee Senior Center, and the 1939 West Palm Beach armory, now the Montgomery Armory Art Center, and calls the West Tampa armory one of the few Art Deco buildings erected in the city and an important architectural landmark in Tampa.

Over five decades the Tampa armory hosted wrestling, dances, Elvis Presley in 1955 and 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. in 1961 and President John Kennedy in 1963.

The nomination records company dinners, community dances and school recitals at the West Tampa armory from the 1940s through the 1960s, boxing, and wrestling matches held there through the 1980s, along with a local legend that professional wrestling in Florida was born at the armory. During segregation in Tampa, it adds, the armory was used for many African-American social events.

Music was a regular draw. The nomination dates Elvis Presley's shows at the armory to July 31, 1955, when a photograph used for his first album cover was taken, and August 5, 1956. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the armory on November 19, 1961, a date WUSF also gives for the speech at Fort Homer Hesterly Armory on North Howard Avenue.

Kennedy came four days before his assassination in Dallas. The nomination says he addressed Florida Chamber of Commerce businessmen at the armory. A City of Tampa proclamation from 2013 gives the date as November 18, 1963: Air Force One landed at MacDill Air Force Base, Kennedy spoke at Al Lopez Field, rode a 28-mile motorcade through downtown Tampa to Fort Homer Hesterly Armory on Howard Avenue for a speech before invited guests, then went on to the International Inn at the Tampa Airport. The nomination's photo list dates its Kennedy photograph November 19, 1963, a day later than the City of Tampa proclamation; the two official records disagree on that caption.

The 116th Field Artillery, the Tactical Air Command and the 53rd Infantry Brigade all used the Tampa armory before the Florida National Guard left in October 2004.

The nomination records that soon after the December 1941 dedication the Tampa 116th Field Artillery battalion became part of the Army's 31st Division, which joined General MacArthur's forces in the Southwest Pacific in December 1943; men of the battalion helped establish beachheads at Maffin Bay, defend Morotai Island and liberate Mindanao. After the war, the Tactical Air Command established its first headquarters in Tampa at the armory in 1946 before moving to Langley Field, Virginia, and the armory served as headquarters of the 53rd Infantry Brigade from the late 1960s to 2004.

Replacement came from across the bay. On December 1, 2001, the nomination states, the Florida National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve announced plans to replace three outdated armories in Tampa and Clearwater, including Fort Homer Hesterly, with a $53.5 million, 216,424-square-foot facility at Gateway Center in Pinellas Park. The National Guard was to keep the northern half of the original Howard Avenue site, which was excluded from the National Register boundary.

The building then stood empty. When WUSF recorded a 2013 conversation about the King speech, it described the West Tampa hall as the now-vacant armory, and the Tampa JCCs and Federation describe the 83,500 square feet it took over as previously vacant space.

Since December 8, 2016, the Tampa armory has housed the Shanna and Bryan Glazer JCC, a community center at 522 North Howard Avenue that is open daily, with guest passes for non-members.

The Tampa JCCs and Federation state that the 83,500 square feet of vacant space in the historic armory became approximately 100,000 square feet of community space, named in recognition of Bryan Glazer. Their list of components includes a fitness and aquatics center, a Visual Arts Center operated by the City of Tampa, a senior center, the Florida-Israel Business Accelerator, event venue space and Tampa Jewish Family Services. WUSF reported at the 2016 opening that the renovation kept the Art Deco architecture with a new modernistic entrance on Howard Avenue.

The operator's June to August 2026 program guide lists these hours for the West Tampa building, with the phone 813.575.5900:

The same Tampa guide says guests under 16 must be accompanied by an adult and that passes come through the membership team. The guide does not publish parking terms; the 2013 nomination describes a motor vehicle parking lot next to the armory building, so the JCC welcome desk at 813.575.5900 is the place to confirm current parking. The Federation offices in the building keep separate hours, Monday to Thursday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Fort Homer Hesterly National Register nomination and NPGallery record, the City of Tampa 2013 Kennedy Day proclamation, the Tampa JCCs and Federation about page, the Glazer JCC summer 2026 program guide, and two WUSF reports on the West Tampa armory.