(Photography Courtesy of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System)
Then: Memorial Highway, now part of Kennedy Boulevard, opened in 1919 as an extension of Grand Central Avenue. Before then, Grand Central ended at Tampa’s city limits at Howard Avenue. The road was extended and dedicated to the United States’ casualties of World War I.
Memorial Highway originally stretched as far as Clearwater, greatly easing travel between Tampa and the Gulf beaches. As the photograph shows, this part of Tampa was “out in the country” at the time and sparsely settled.
Now: Memorial Highway, along with Lafayette Street in downtown Tampa and Grand Central Avenue through Hyde Park, was renamed for President John F. Kennedy in December 1963, following his assassination one month earlier. Kennedy had traveled the road during his Tampa visit just days before his fateful trip to Dallas. Lisbon Avenue was renamed MacDill during World War II as it extended north from the new air base at the southern end of the Interbay Peninsula.
Kennedy Boulevard eventually became an important commercial corridor, with many of the old homes replaced by businesses large and small. Some of those homes were converted into businesses, including the two-story stucco home shown in the “Then” photo above.
Rodney Kite-Powell is a Tampa-born author, the official historian of Hillsborough County and the director of the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center, where he has worked since 1995.
Want to learn more Tampa Bay History? Read on here. Or if you’re looking to advertise, click here.
