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Historic place

S. H. Kress and Co.

811 N Franklin St, Tampa, FL

A five-and-dime in terra cotta, closed since 1981 and the subject of at least four failed redevelopment plans.

📅 1928–1981🏛️ StoreClosed
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The story

The S. H. Kress and Co. building is a four-story Renaissance Revival structure designed by G.E. Mackey, with terra-cotta ornament on both facades, a bronze marquee and a second front on Florida Avenue. Wikipedia dates it to 1928, though one category listing says 1929. It has been called one of the last major commercial buildings built in Tampa before the Great Depression.

It sits between the former Woolworth and J.J. Newberry stores in a block known as the Kress block. The store closed in 1981 and the building has been vacant since. It joined the National Register of Historic Places on April 7, 1983.

Plans have come and gone. A 1987 plan added a nine-story atrium office building nearby. A 2006 condo development was held off, and in 2014 a 24-story hotel conversion was proposed and then scrapped. In 2017 the Wilson Company bought the block.

What's There Now

As of the latest information found (2017), the building was vacant and the Wilson Company owned the block.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

It was built as one of Tampa's last major commercial structures before the Depression.
A 24-story hotel conversion was proposed in 2014 and scrapped.
It has two street fronts, on Franklin Street and on Florida Avenue.

Nearby history

F. W. Woolworth Store (1960 lunch counter sit-in)

901 N Franklin St · 63 m away
On February 29, 1960, high school students sat down at this lunch counter, and by September Tampa's counters were integr

The Hub Bar

719 N Franklin St · 68 m away
A downtown Tampa dive that traces itself to 1949 and moved into its Franklin Street building in 2002.

Tampa Theatre

711 N Franklin St · 88 m away
Tampa's first air-conditioned commercial building was nearly lost in 1973, and it is still showing movies under a painte

Franklin Theatre / Florida Theatre

710 N Franklin St · 111 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

Maas Brothers Department Store

700 N Franklin St · 118 m away
Tampa's hometown department store started with a 23-by-90-foot shop and ended as a parking lot after the condos never ca

Floridan Hotel

905 N Florida Ave · 137 m away
Tampa's tallest building for 40 years, its wartime bar was nicknamed the Surefire Room, and it sat empty from 1989 until

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._H._Kress_and_Co._Building_(Tampa,_Florida)