Identity elements
Name and location of repository
Level of description
Item
Title
Photograph album: Golden Hills
Date(s)
- circa 1926 (Creation)
Extent
Name of creator
Biographical history
Content and structure elements
Scope and content
"(Florida): Golden Hills Uptown Tampa (cover title). (Tampa, Fl.: Burgert Brothers, ca. 1926). Eighteen glossy linen-backed silver gelatin or albumen photographs bound in, including sixteen 7 1/2 x 9 1/2-inch albumens (two of them two-panel folding images), and two 7 1/2 x 46-inch folding panoramic images, plus two detached 7 1/2 x 9 1/2-inch albumens laid in. Oblong quarto. Contemporary brown limp pebbled leather, gilt.
A handsome, professionally-produced promotional photograph album for a proposed Uptown Tampa development called 'Golden Hills.' These early 20th-century views show Tamps Bay and the adjacent rural areas on which the development seeks to build, the same area where the fully-developed Temple Terrace area sits today. The photographs show a sketch of a proposed 'Million Dollar Hotel' to be built at Golden Hills, a perspective view of the model showing Uptown Tampa, multiple views of orange groves, a few aerial shots showing the lands for the proposed development, 'Beautiful Tampa Lake as it now appears,' sample types of homes to be built at Golden Hills, rudimentary beginnings of streets for the development, with groups of people milling about a field with 'Lake Lee' in the background. The second panorama shows the current downtown city of Tampa in the mid-1920s. Regarding the fate of the development, a handwritten note taped into the inside front cover is instructive and reads: 'Golden Hills Project. Feb. 8, 1926. East Hillsborough Co. Never got off the ground. Depression probably killed it.'
The present photographs were produced by the Burgert Brothers, Tampa's leading commercial photographers from 1917 to about the early-1960s. Established by Al and Jean Burgert, the studio focused primarily on the Tampa area, including Ybor City, Port Tampa, Temple Terrace, and Ballast Point. The Burgert Brothers' photographs captured Tampa's transformation from small coastal town to major urban center, recording the area's daily life, festivals, churches, homes, businesses, and urban development projects..." --description from William Reese Company