picture tampa of olde
jasonIf you have been to a business anywhere in the bay area that wants to establish some “cred” as a real hometown resturant, store, or office, they are likely to have old black and white pictures on the wall depicting Tampa Bay in days gone by. Many of the photographs indicate they are from the University of South Florida or the Hillsborough County Library but many people may not realize they are easily obtainable online.
The new USF Libraries Digital Collections site is much more user friendly than its predessessor ever was. You can browse the 13 collections represented or use the advanced search option to sort the photos based on detailed descriptions for each photo.
The largest collection of Tampa photos is that of the Burgert Brothers. 
For an even larger collection of their images, you can access the Hillsborough County Public Library website. Hillsborough County indicates they have over 13,000 scanned photos within the catalogue. However, the search function is not as easy to use as the USF site. At HCPLS, we are unable to simply browse the archives at random, and all the photos have a silly “Property of the Hillsborough County Library System” imprint in the middle of them.
Whichever way you choose, take some time and search for your favorite Tampa landmark or event and see what it looked like when Kennedy was Lafayette and Franklin street was a dirt road.
Tags: citizens, county, history, names, online, tampa
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July 13th, 2006 at 10:37 am
Still working on it, but The Tampa Chronograph has a bit of a base of comparison photos.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:45 am
What about when MLK was Buffalo? My in-laws never gave you directions without calling it that.
July 13th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Yeah I remember the warnings of how people would be too confused to function if the changed the street name from Buffalo.
Somehow we survived but it was a close one.
July 13th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
It’s not very hard to browse the Burgert Brothers Collection at the HCPLC.org site. Here are the basic steps:
From the catalog page, click on the “Quick Search” box on the top menu. Then under “Type of Material”, highlight Burgert Brothers Photographs. In the “Quick Search” box, type your search term and click “go.” The following page will show your search results, with a browsable photograph and detailed information for each image. True, there is a watermark on every image but that is only to protect unauthorized reproduction. For about $10, you can purchase the pristine image of your choosing. As far as searchability and having access to images, it doesn’t get much easier or better than their site.
July 13th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
http://www.tampabayhistorycenter.org/giftshop.htm
You forgot to mention that you sell merch too.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I think they changed Buffalo to MLK in the late 80s. It was still called Buffalo when I moved to Seminole Heights in 1985.
BTW, you can get unwatermarked electronic image of the B. Bros pix for free from the Tampa-Hillsborough library, and really nice prints by Bob Baggett for about $25. All pix are searchable online. USF library has a smaller collection, which is all searchable. (see? selling nothing, Jason. Message received, sorry for my earlier exhuberance)