C. Perry Snell: In the Pursuit of Beauty

After years of publicity stunts and promotions, St. Petersburg’s entrance into the second decade of the twentieth century was unmistakable. The Sunshine City outpaced nearly every Florida town in growth and construction, recording well over twenty million dollars worth of construction in 1925 alone. 

Turning liquid into land, as the adage goes, developers dredged and filled along the shorelines, creating artificial inlets and man-made islands. Commodore Perry Snell (“Commodore” being Snell’s name and not title), a transplanted Kentucky pharmacist, epitomized the term ‘land developer,’ through his dredged enclave, Snell Isle.

During the heady boom years, 1921-1926, St. Petersburg expanded from eleven to fifty-three acres in size. Land literally came forth from the oceans. Where once stood a small spoil island, often submerged at high tide, land appeared nearly overnight. C. Perry Snell, self-proclaimed pioneer land developer and donor of downtown waterfront parks, opened the upscale Snell Isle subdivision in late 1925. His promotional plan called for clubhouses, golf courses, and fine stately homes, all on a pristine, yet pricey 275-acre island.

In all actuality, Snell probably had less than forty or fifty acres that were above sea level at the time, but then came the dredges and the determined men that transformed our bays and waterfronts. Tourists-turned-buyers had their choice of hotels to pass the time during construction, however, Snell shrewdly offered recreation and accommodations, built on-site, while they waited. From shuffleboard and sunbathing to unexcelled golf and gulf fishing, tourists had endless options. There were concerts in Williams Park and nightly dancing closer to the water’s edge at the newly erected Million Dollar Pier. Snell, however, would spend millions more in St. Petersburg than on the creation of the city’s beloved landmark, known today as the Snell Arcade.

As city boundaries expanded and scores of impressive boom-time hotels soared skyward, so did land prices and census figures. St. Petersburg’s citizen count, which topped fourteen thousand by 1920, had nearly doubled as the boom was in full swing four years later. It paled in comparison, however, to the tens of thousands of annual visitors. In the first eighteen months since the 1924 opening of the Gandy Bridge, over one million vehicles crossed Tampa Bay. Indeed, St. Petersburg was open for business.

At the height of his success, Snell had bank deposits totaling $3,000,000 (around $50,000,000 today). His first crown jewel, the Snell Arcade Building, still stands today as his opulent declaration to the finer things. “With Olympian vision and appetite,” observed Florida historian Dr. Gary Mormino, Snell spared little expense obtaining European antiques and designs for his Arcade. Moving on to his next ‘masterpiece,’ Snell Isle, he used the Central Avenue structure as collateral to finance his self-declared “Pearl of Pinellas.”

But even the Florida land boom (and inevitable bust) got the best of C. Perry Snell. He lost ownership of his beloved Arcade and office building before the completion of his island paradise. Noted historian and land developer Walter Fuller once quipped that Perry Snell was a man who “deliberately impoverished himself in the pursuit of beauty.”

Eighty years have elapsed since C. Perry Snell’s passing, yet his contributions to this picturesque waterfront community are enjoyed by thousands daily; for that, we remain indebted to his Florida dreams.