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Historic place

Maas Brothers Department Store

700 N Franklin St, Tampa, FL

Tampa's hometown department store started with a 23-by-90-foot shop and ended as a parking lot after the condos never came.

📅 1920–1991🏛️ StoreDemolished
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The story

Abe Maas opened the Dry Goods Palace in Tampa on December 10, 1886, and his brother Isaac joined him on September 15, 1887, making it Maas Brothers. The shop was 23 by 90 feet and grew into a 39-store Gulf Coast chain. Wikipedia says the third and largest downtown store, with the state's first escalator, opened in 1921 at Zack and Tampa Streets.

Old Tampa Photos places the flagship at 700 Franklin Street, in a building where the American National Bank was the first commercial building on the corner in 1904. Maas Brothers moved there in 1920 and added two floors in the mid-1920s. In 1949 it also remodeled the old Strand Theatre next door into a budget fashion center.

The downtown store closed in February 1991 and the stores became Burdines that October. The empty building was demolished in 2006 for condominiums that were never built.

What's There Now

A parking lot.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

The downtown store reportedly had the state's first escalator.
In 1949 Maas Brothers turned the old Strand Theatre into a budget fashion center.
The building sat vacant for about 15 years before demolition.

Nearby history

Franklin Theatre / Florida Theatre

710 N Franklin St · 6 m away
A theater named in a $50 public contest in 1924 was cleared with its whole block in 1978 for a power company headquarter

Tampa Theatre

711 N Franklin St · 50 m away
Tampa's first air-conditioned commercial building was nearly lost in 1973, and it is still showing movies under a painte

The Hub Bar

719 N Franklin St · 65 m away
A downtown Tampa dive that traces itself to 1949 and moved into its Franklin Street building in 2002.

Victory Theatre / Palace Theatre

700 N Tampa St · 88 m away
A vaudeville house that became the only Cinerama theater within 500 miles and ran The Sound of Music for a year and five

S. H. Kress and Co.

811 N Franklin St · 118 m away
A five-and-dime in terra cotta, closed since 1981 and the subject of at least four failed redevelopment plans.

Federal Building, U.S. Courthouse and Downtown Postal Station

601 N Florida Ave · 157 m away
Tampa's post office, courthouse and custom house, finished in 1905, is now a Le Meridien hotel owned by the city.

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Sourceshttps://oldtampaphotos.com/maas-brothers-department-store-700-franklin-street