Then: Tampa’s first Catholic Church, St. Louis Parish, was established in 1859 on Florida Avenue and Twiggs Street. That wood-frame structure served the needs of Tampa’s small Catholic population until the growth brought by the arrival of Henry Plant’s railroad and the founding of the cigar industry in the 1880s. On February 16, 1898, ground was broken for a new, grand church. That building, named Sacred Heart, was dedicated on January 15, 1905. This photo shows the new church along with the original, though expanded, St. Louis Parish to the right.
Now: The church building, designed in the Romanesque style and adorned with granite and marble, still stands largely unchanged. The 70 stained glass windows were all made in Munich, Germany, by Franz Mayer Co. and are original to the building. In addition to the church, the property was home to a boys’ school, operating from 1899 until 1956.
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.
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