Ask Margaret
I’ve noticed that the Pinellas County beaches have some
charming little cottages. Have they been there for a long time,
and does anyone know which one is the oldest?
Despite progress and their replacement
by new construction, several original
cottages and bungalows still remain on
or near our pristine, award-winning
Pinellas County beaches. The easiest way
to find them is to follow Gulf Boulevard
and its continuation south onto St. Pete
Beach’s Pass-a-Grille Way and north
onto Clearwater Beach’s Gulfview
Boulevard and Mandalay Avenue. If you
leave the main roads to explore the less
developed side streets and older residential
neighborhoods, you will discover pockets
of preserved or restored beach houses.
This is especially true in Pinellas’ more
venerable barrier island beach towns and
communities, such as Pass-a-Grille, Indian
Rocks Beach and North Clearwater Beach.
You may find houses dating from the turnof
the-century, 1920s and later in a variety
of architectural styles such as clapboard,
bungalow and Mediterranean. You may
even be lucky enough to discover one of
the few houses plastered with an old-time
by Margaret Word Burnside
140 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | MAY/JUNE 2018
D.M., Tampa
Florida mixture containing crushed shells,
known as tabby or tabby cement.
The oldest area of our beaches is
considered to be the Pass-a-Grille portion
of St. Pete Beach, an area formerly known
as Long Key, which is located near the
southern tip of Pinellas County’s barrier
islands between the Gulf of Mexico and
Boca Ciega Bay. If you visit Pass-a-Grille,
which is known as the first resort town on
our state’s Central West Coast, you will
be able to see the oldest residence on the
area’s entire stretch of beaches. The cottage
at 608 Pass-a-Grille Way was supposedly
one of the first to be built and was the first
to be officially homesteaded on what was
then called Long Key.
Zephaniah Phillips (1837-1903), a Union
Army Civil War veteran, his wife Mary
Pierce Phillips and their family became
the beach area’s first permanent settlers,
when they homesteaded land and built
the cottage in 1886, years after the family
had moved to Hillsborough County.
Homesteading, according to a government
act passed in 1862, awarded 160-acre land
grants for a small price to adult citizens
who, after residing there for five years,
would be rewarded with the land’s deed,
thus ensuring that an area’s early settlers,
their families and heirs, would retain the
rights to the property they had worked
to make habitable. Zephaniah apparently
was well-qualified to spearhead the
development of our beaches. He was an
entrepreneur, a patented inventor and
a real estate agent, who had skills as a
mechanic, builder, repairman and more.
If you have any questions about the
people, places or things in the Tampa
Bay area, please send them to
“Ask Margaret” at Tampa Bay Magazine,
2531 Landmark Drive, Suite 101,
Clearwater, Florida 33761.
We regret that not all questions
can be answered.