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Historic place

Peter O. Knight Airport

700 S Davis Blvd, Tampa, FL

Tampa's first real airport sat on Davis Islands; airliners outgrew it by 1946, and the original terminal was torn down in 1965.

📅 1935–1946🏛️ OtherRepurposed
Open on the mapSlide back to 1935

The story

Peter O. Knight Airport on Davis Islands was funded in 1935 as a Works Progress Administration project, at $105,343 including a seaplane basin. It was named for the lawyer and businessman Peter Oliphant Knight. The original building had a restaurant and a dance floor.

It was Tampa's main airport until 1946, when Eastern and National Airlines left after a National Airlines crash there and moved to Drew Field, now Tampa International. Larger airliners had outgrown the Davis Island runways. Residents asked in 1952 to use the building for the Davis Island Yacht Club and were denied. By 1958 the facilities had deteriorated enough that county aviation officials considered abandoning them, and in 1962 a photographer shot the abandoned administration building. In 1965 the original building was demolished and replaced by a 2,100-square-foot terminal with a parabolic roof and a snack bar.

What's There Now

It is still a small general aviation airport on Davis Islands, with the 1965-era building and a pilot lounge.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Residents sought the building for a yacht club in 1952 and were refused.
The 1965 replacement cost $65,000 and had a flight-themed design.
The airport still serves almost entirely general aviation.

Nearby history

Fort Brooke (site, now Tampa Convention Center)

333 S Franklin St · 2.7 km away
Tampa's founding Army post watched the Seminoles from 1824 until 1883; most of it stood where the convention center is n

Tampa Tribune Building (Parker Street plant)

202 S Parker St · 3.0 km away
The Tribune moved here in 1975, lost its paper to the Tampa Bay Times in 2016, and the riverfront plant became 400 apart

Tampa Tribune Building (Lafayette Street)

507 E Lafayette St · 3.3 km away
The Tribune built an Art Nouveau headquarters in 1935, left for Parker Street in 1975, and saw it demolished in 1977 for

Tampa City Hall (1915)

315 E John F Kennedy Blvd · 3.3 km away
Built in 1915, it was Tampa's tallest building for about ten years and got a $16 million renovation in 2017.

University of Tampa

401 W Kennedy Blvd · 3.4 km away
Tampa Bay Junior College moved into the closed hotel in August 1933 and grew into the University of Tampa.

Valencia Garden

811 W Kennedy Blvd · 3.4 km away
Manuel Beiro's Spanish restaurant ran 82 years, survived a 1966 fire and closed when the University of Tampa bought the

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Sourceshttps://www.oldtampaphotos.com/peter-o-knight-airport-on-davis-islands