NEIGHBORHOODS
Hidden South St. Pete community
A little south of downtown St. Pete, the city’s orderly grid pattern
dissolves into a few narrow winding lanes, sheltered in a dark tree
a small community has formed in the shadows of old oaks draped
in philodendrons and night-blooming cereus. Instead of manicured
lawns, a carpet of ferns and ivies with narrow paths lead to homes
that hide in the shade.
The neighborhood is appropriately called Driftwood.
It’s a special spot. From Old Southeast, take 1st Street South until
it ends, and you have arrived. The peninsula’s earliest European
residents chose this point for a settlement called Pinellas Village.
18 StPeteLifeMag.com January/February 2019
Before there was St. Pete, there was history here. This was the site
suspected of smuggling. Some of St. Pete’s prominent early families
made their homes on Big Bayou. This is the known and often
repeated history of Driftwood.
In the 1930s, Mark Dixon Dodd and architect Archie Parish designed
heat in an era before air conditioning. Another batch of mid-century
modern homes from the 1950s feature crisp lines and low angles
tastes.
Driftwood
BY JONATHAN KILE
/StPeteLifeMag.com