St.Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950 (Florida Sand Dollar Books) - Softcover

St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950 chronicles the early history of St. Petersburg and the lower Pinellas Peninsula. A forerunner of the modern Sunbelt city, early St. Petersburg successfully mixed southern and northern cultures and used vigorous public relations and advertising to promote itself. By the mid-twentieth century, the "Sunshine City" had developed into one of the most important resort communities in the United States, a self-styled subtropical playground that stood tantalizingly apart from the mainstream of urban America. Before the age of expressways, heat pumps, fast-food restaurants, and suburban shopping malls, local life revolved around institutions and traditions long associated with the Florida Dream - the centuries-old promise of perpetual warmth, health, comfort, and leisure. Arsenault describes these institutions and many of the personalities that enlivened them.

Raymond Arsenault, winner of the Florida Humanities Council 2019 Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing, is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History and director of the University Honors College at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.