New. Modern. But better?
Downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., had a problem in the 1950s: The Seaboard Air Line. Its passenger station was on the street — literally on Second Avenue South — and the trains ran over it and other streets to get there.
Multiple passenger trains including sections of the Orange Blossom Special and Silver Meteor came and went daily to this Sunshine State tourist mecca. These loaded and emptied on the throughfare, causing traffic headaches with the burgeoning number of cars and other vehicles at the time.
Adding to the crazy mix was rival Atlantic Coast Line’s station between Second and Third streets.
Charming, definitely. Convenient? Hardly.
“St. Pete” city fathers, wanting to keep the sources of tourist traffic but also get them out of downtown, put together a relocation package for the Seaboard. The railroad built a new station of moderate size at 415 First Ave. North that opened in 1959.
Shown here on Jan. 20, 1959, the structure is decorated for a festive occasion that we can assume is its grand opening. The modern edifice boasts complete air conditioning, automatic doors, full-length picture windows, colorfully upholstered wrought-iron furniture, decorative interior planters, and a host of other amenities.
It also had a roof over the driveway entrance, handy when those pesky afternoon showers pop up, and similarly a 518-foot canopy over the loading platform equally good at keeping the Florida sun at bay. Perhaps most ambitiously the parking lot had room for 300 cars.
The $650,000 terminal didn’t enjoy a long life. Seaboard and ACL merged in 1967; the latter had moved out of downtown to a new station on 31st Street North four years prior. Seaboard Coast Line operations were consolidated there in 1968 and that facility survived into the Amtrak era.