The Davis Islands Swimming Pool
by Rodney Kite-Powell
Curator, Tampa Bay History Center
Tucked behind an apartment complex on Davis Boulevard and
Bosphorous Avenue, across from the Marjorie Park Yacht Basin and Hudson
Manor, sits one of the original amenities designed for residents and visitors
of Davis Islands. Constructed in 1929 and originally known simply as the
Davis Islands Pool, the Roy E. Jenkins Pool at 154 Columbia Drive has
provided cool relief from Tampa’s hot summer sun for seventy-five years.
One of the last of David P. Davis’ original design features, the
“Roman Pool” was to be a focal point of recreational activity on the Islands.
The pool was similar to the one located at Temple Terrace, another 1920s
community, located north of Tampa on the Hillsborough River. Other area
pools were at Palma Ceia Springs by the Bayshore (present-day Fred Ball
Park) and the pool at Sulphur Springs. With the exception of the Temple
Terrace pool, which has since been removed, no other pool in the city was as
ornate as the pool on Davis Islands.
Built at a cost of $75,000, the original plan for the pool was as
elaborate as the rest of Davis’ plans for the Islands. Unfortunately, the
financial climate had cooled when the time finally arrived to build, so Davis
Islands, Inc., the successor to Davis’ DP Davis Properties, had to adjust the
building plans accordingly. Looking back, it is amazing that the facility was
constructed at all.
Cost-saving measures would be the rule, and corners were cut in a
variety of places, from the overall scale of the pool and ancillary buildings to
the interiors of those buildings. According to a September 15, 1929 Tampa
Morning Tribune article, the company “changed the plan to use high grade
wooden lockers to ready-built metal lockers from Ohio” because of the need
for “home labor” to be given extra attention. Though home construction did
continue in 1929, it was at a much slower pace than during the boom era of
the mid-‘20s: more workers were not needed. A more likely reason is that
budgetary constraints allowed for neither the high grade lockers nor the
skilled labor necessary to install them.
The pool did feature a number of modern conveniences and what were
considered high-tech mechanisms designed to keep the pool and its patrons
clean. The pool water was treated with alum and lime, then sterilized with
chlorine. Among the technological advances were “rapid sand filters” and
showers and a circulating water basin, intended to both wash contaminants
off of swimmers before they reached the pool deck and to discourage people
with street shoes from walking on the deck at all. The 1929 Tribune article
boasted “Tampans and their visitors will swim in water pure enough to
drink.”
The Davis Islands pool was part of a bigger plan for that section of the
Islands. The overall layout was to include: dressing rooms for 400 bathers,
200 for the pool and 200 more for a “sunken pool” to be built to the south; a
children’s pool, plus a playground and solariums “placed in an adjoining
garden.” According to Davis Islands, Inc. president George Osborn, the
entire block was to be a “pleasure ground for kiddies and grownups.” Most
of those features were not constructed, though there was a small garden just
to the south of the main entrance to the pool which is now the site of a small
playground.
The Davis Islands pool was renamed in 1965 to honor the memory of
Roy E. Jenkins, a man who was “known throughout the South for his keen
interest in the youth of Florida and in water safety,” according to a Tampa
Tribune article marking his death. Jenkins, who passed away the year before
the city honored him by naming the pool for him, entered the water safety
program offered by the Tampa Red Cross in 1923. Jenkins spent a lifetime
encouraging both aquatic sports and the Red Cross Lifesaving Corps. He
was an honorary director of the Greater Tampa Swimming Association and
served for eleven years as an official for the Tampa Invitational Swim Meet.
Tampa’s city council recently bestowed local historic landmark status
to the Cuscaden Park swimming pool, which was built in cooperation with
the Works Projects Administration during the Great Depression in the
northern part of Ybor City. In addition, the city parks department restored
the swimming complex, bringing an old gem back to life. Perhaps it is time
for the city to expend the same effort, and extend the same honor, to the pool
on Davis Islands.