Sulphur Springs Water Tower in Tampa, Florida

The Sulphur Springs Water Tower is a 1927 Gothic Revival water tower at 8105 North Florida Avenue in Tampa, built over a spring beside the Hillsborough River and listed as a city landmark and on the National Register in 1989.

The City of Tampa's 2024 Landmarks and Historic Preservation Designations book describes the tower as built 214 feet high over a spring on the banks of the Hillsborough River, housing a 150 thousand gallon holding tank, and serving as the principal water source for the area until the early 1970s. It names Josiah Richardson as builder and Grover Poole as engineer, and calls the structure one of only two architecturally designed water towers in the state.

The city now calls it the River Park Tower. Its November 2023 news release described the former water tower as one of Tampa's most iconic landmarks, standing more than 200 feet high and carrying a near 100-year-old history. The tower stands in River Tower Park, which the city's 2025 Park Finder Challenge lists as a 12.52-acre Sulphur Springs conservation park at 401 E Bird St., home to the historic Sulphur Springs Water Tower.

City of Tampa records give the tower's date, style, designations, builders and capacity, and they disagree on its exact height.

The height difference is in the city's own pages: the designations book gives 214 feet, the Sulphur Springs neighborhood page says the tower is 225 feet tall and dates it to around 1927, and the 2023 release says only that it stands more than 200 feet high. This page reports all three rather than choosing one.

The tower was built to supply water to the Sulphur Springs resort area, which the city describes as a tourist and recreation center that grew around a naturally bubbling spring north of downtown Tampa.

For the tower's backstory, the city's neighborhood page is brief. It traces the area's first appearance in Tampa records to an 1889 bridge contract at the road now called Van Dyke Place, credits Dr. John Mills with the first bath houses and pool by 1901, and says Josiah Richardson, the man later credited with the tower, bought 100 acres from Mills in 1904 and filed the Sulphur Springs addition to Tampa. Around 1927, the page says, the water tower followed.

The Landmarks and Historic Preservation Designations book calls the tower one of the few remnants of the successful tourist and recreation center that flourished around the spring and included a direct streetcar line from Tampa. The water the tower once stored came from that setting: the Southwest Florida Water Management District still counts the spring among the river's two second-magnitude springs, with an average flow of 22 million gallons of water per day.

The other surviving resort structure is the 1925 Sulphur Springs Gazebo at 701 East Bird Street, also built by Josiah Richardson and designated a Tampa local landmark in 2013.

The city's Landmarks and Historic Preservation Designations book describes the gazebo as an octagonal two-story Classical Revival structure that sits on top of the spring for which the park and the surrounding community are named. It has no National Register listing. The same entry explains how the resort grew: in the early 1900s the land around the spring was platted and sold with small cottages marketed mainly to tourists, and after a streetcar line was extended north along Nebraska Avenue, Sulphur Springs became readily accessible to Tampa residents.

By the 1920s, the book says, Sulphur Springs was a popular destination for both locals and tourists, and the Sulphur Springs park featured an alligator farm, a pool, a toboggan slide and a dance hall. The gazebo and the water tower were both built by Richardson within about two years of each other, in 1925 and 1927, and the two stand a short distance apart on Bird Street and Florida Avenue near the Hillsborough River.

The City of Tampa looks after the tower as part of River Tower Park, one of its Sulphur Springs parks, and has budgeted capital money for it.

The city's FY2025 to FY2029 capital projects summary lists project 1002396, Sulphur Springs Tower Improvements, in Council District 5, with actuals to date of $458,619 and a budget to date and total budget of $526,000. The Park Finder Challenge classifies River Tower Park as a conservation park in the Sulphur Springs neighborhood.

The surrounding neighborhood is the subject of current city planning. The City of Tampa's Sulphur Springs Neighborhood Action Plan describes a community of approximately 10,000 residents, with a timeline that ran from a January 2025 data assessment to a final plan and implementation strategies in November 2025.

In November 2023 the City of Tampa awarded a $309,175 contract to Kimszal Contracting, Inc. to pressure wash, paint and relight the River Park Tower, its first refurbishment since 1989.

The Tampa November 2023 news release, posted November 6, 2023, said the interior and exterior of the structure would be cleaned and repainted and the lights at the top replaced, with the work expected to take about six weeks, weather permitting. It quoted Mayor Jane Castor as saying the tower had stood strong for nearly 100 years and that the city has a responsibility to ensure it continues to do so.

WUSF reported the same contract and six-week schedule on November 7, 2023, and repeated the city's description of the tower as one of two architecturally designed water towers in Florida. The release itself carries a notice that the information is nearly three years old, and no later city notice on completion was located for this page.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, for the Sulphur Springs tower against the City of Tampa designations book, its 2023 release, its neighborhood, park finder, capital projects and action plan pages, and the Southwest Florida Water Management District springs page.