St. Peter's Episcopal Cathedral - St Petersburg, FL
N 27° 46.400 W 082° 38.322
17R E 338530 N 3073169
Not the first in town, but still an old one.
Waymark Code: WM5CB5
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 12/16/2008
Views: 24
Sunny weather and the dream of economic gain have drawn tourists and entrepreneurs to St. Petersburg, Fla., for more than 100 years. Those visitors and those visionaries have played a role in the growth of St. Peter's Episcopal Cathedral.
In the late 19th Century, what would become the city of St. Petersburg was little more than a pioneer outpost among the bayous and palmettos, mosquitoes and alligators on the shores of Tampa Bay, home to a few fishermen and citrus farmers.
Fewer than 50 people lived in St. Petersburg in 1888, when the Russian immigrant Peter Demens brought the Orange Belt Railroad here, opening up the area to tourism, commerce and real estate development. In the next two years the city's population grew to 273, making it the largest community on the Pinellas peninsula.
Our parish was born in 1889 as an unorganized mission established by St. Bartholomew's, itself created around 1887 by English immigrants.
The new mission, known as the Church of the Holy Spirit, was a simple wooden chapel built on property at 11th Street and Baum Avenue donated by Jacob Baum, a citrus farmer and developer.
In 1894 that mission was formally organized, renamed the Church of St. Peter, and moved to its permanent location at Fourth Street and Second Avenue N, across the street from Williams Park, a major downtown gathering place with its green benches and band shell.
By 1899 the church building was complete, and the original wooden chapel became the Parish House.
St. Peter's became an official parish church in 1906, the same year a new Parish Hall was built, which lasted until 1938, when the present Parish Hall (since added on to) was constructed.
In 1925 the church was enlarged by nearly doubling the length of the nave. It was extended in the latter part of the 1940s to the south to form a transept space that later became St. Mary's Chapel. Our signature St. Peter window in the chancel was installed during the tenure of the Rev. E. E. Madeira (1911-1918).
The 1920s were busy years for the City of St. Petersburg. This was the Boom Era in Florida real estate, when speculation was at its height and lots sometimes changed hands several times in the same day at ever-higher prices. Promoters arranged a constant schedule of parades, beauty contests, entertainment and sports events to attract northern visitors. "During the 1920s, St. Petersburg became the self-proclaimed world capital of everything from horseshoes and shuffleboard to checkers and croquet,'' writes historian Raymond Arsenault in his book, St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950.
The wealthy wintered at the big waterfront resort hotels, such as the Soreno and the Vinoy Park. Other tourists packed the boarding houses and cafeterias and socialized on the city's green benches. In August 1920 a tent city had to be set up to accommodate northern visitors when all the hotels and boarding houses were full, and the National Guard set up tents in Williams Park. It was as if all America, weary of World War I, decided to vacation in Florida at the same time.
Those were busy years for St. Peter's. It was those winter visitors who packed the pews every Sunday, and at some Easter services the church was so full that regular members couldn't find seats. The offering plates were full. The church was given the chimes in the bell tower.
But the Depression ended the real-estate boom and the tourist crush. Bank deposits fell from $46-million in 1925 to $4-million in 1931, historian Walter Fuller recounts, and the city's population … which had grown by 51 percent between 1925 and 1930 … grew only 1 percent between 1930 and 1935.
St. Peter's survived that period of declining membership and shrinking income, thanks in large part to the leadership of Chaplain Evan Alexander Edwards, who served as rector from 1927 to 1950. He led the parish through the Second World War and into the period of postwar recovery. By 1936, the vestry was talking about the need for more ushers to alleviate the "immense crowds'' during communion services. Chaplain Edwards brought St. Peter's out of debt, financed and oversaw the building of the present Parish Hall, and saw the parish rolls grow to 2,000 members.
The end of World War II brought the tourists back, but it also brought a huge increase in Florida's population. Veterans who had trained in Florida and liked it returned to establish permanent homes and families, with lots of baby-boom children. Under the leadership of the Rev. James L. Duncan (rector from 1950 to 1961) and the Rev. Charles F. Langlands (assistant rector and later rector, from 1961 to 1966), eight new churches were founded in south Pinellas County, six of them in St. Petersburg, between 1953 and 1959. It was during Fr Langlands' leadership that St Peter's acquired a large Austin organ (1965.)
The population growth in Florida -- which continues to this day -- meant that by the late 1960s, it was time to divide the Diocese of South Florida into three. The area from Marco Island north to Spring Hill, and from the Gulf of Mexico east to Plant City, was established as the Diocese of Southwest Florida, and in 1969 St. Peter's was designated as the cathedral of the new diocese. The Rev. Leroy D. Lawson was named the first dean of the new cathedral, and he too presided over a period of great growth (1966-1981), with full pews and a packed Sunday School. He also achieved a dream of providing low-cost housing for the elderly with the construction of the nearby Peterborough Apartments, built with a federal grant, and he extended the church's outreach to hospital chaplaincy and social-work ministries.
While other downtown churches have closed or moved to the suburbs in recent years, St. Peter's has maintained its role both as a cathedral and as a parish church in a downtown setting. Office workers, shoppers, tourists and Major League Baseball fans pass by our yellow-brick sanctuary in the heart of St. Petersburg, just a few blocks from Tampa Bay and around the corner from City Hall.
In the mid-1980s St. Peter's purchased the former sanctuary of the First Baptist Church, directly to our south, as well as the Baptists' five-story office and classroom building. For some years the office building was the Cathedral Center for Ministry, housing a bookstore, meeting rooms, and space leased to non-profit organizations.
In the winter of 2007-08 we razed all the buildings on our campus except for the cathedral itself: the Cathedral Center for Ministry, our offices, three-story classroom building, parish hall and kitchen. Groundbreaking was held May 11, 2008, for our new building: 48,000 square feet in three stories, providing office and meeting space, parish hall and commercial kitchen. Space on the third floor will be leased to an outside tenant whose payments will offset part of the facility's $7.7-million cost. The Bishop of the Diocese of Southwest Florida will have a satellite office there. Completion is expected in the fourth quarter of 2009.
In the summer of 2008, St. Peter's is seeking $1-million in seed money to retain the historic facade of the Baptist Sanctuary; tear down the back of this crumbling structure; and create a gated worship garden with labyrinth, benches, and water feature. We plan to create a columbarium, for both Episcopalians and non-Episcopalians, that will provide a long-term reveue source for the cathedral.
Our hope is that our new buildings will energize our ministries to those around us in downtown St. Petersburg: the poor and needy we often meet literally on our doorstep; those who come seeking music and the arts; residents of the new waterfront high-rises tht have been part of the renaissance of downtown St. Petersburg in recent years. Our ministry booklet, enumerating many active groups, is available elsewhere on this web site.
All that we do, both within the cathedral and outside it, is focused on living out our mission statement: "to know Christ and make Christ known."
Present
Today St. Peter's is striving to live into its role as a cathedral in the city. An outreach program called "Our Daily Bread'' ministers to the downtown homeless and needy. We have a busy caregivers' group that provides pastoral outreach. The church hosts monthly dinners for the LIGHT Support Group (Living in God's Hands Today, a ministry for those infected or affected by AIDS). We support Resurrection House, a transitional housing program for homeless families. Our informal weekly Come As You Are (CAYA) service, provides participatory, music-oriented worship, an easy way for those who are not "trained Episcopalians" to get to know us and participate. Our choirs for children and adults and private music instruction train voices and provide music for worship services both here and in the wider community.
Those are some of the ways we reach out to the public as well as to our own congregation, and they reflect the changing demands of the times as we live out or mission statement: "to know Christ and make Him known."
This report draws on a parish history by Will Michaels; on "The Keys: The Life and Work of the Cathedral Church of St. Peter"; and on "St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950," by Raymond Arsenault.
Active Church: Yes
School on property: No
Website: [Web Link]
Date Built: Not listed
Service Times: Not listed
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