Progress Update on the Pasadena Lake Estates Neighborhood Association History Project

We are excited to share the progress on the LPENA History Project. We have partnered with the head archivist at the St. Petersburg Museum of History to delve into the rich past of our neighborhood, which is an amalgamation of several independently platted communities dating back to the 1920s.

The project is structured into four phases. We are thrilled to report that Phase 1, which involved gathering all the original plats and historical information about our area, has been completed. We collected details from various sources, including newspapers, sales announcements, and biographical data of early developers, some of whom were original homeowners.

We have now embarked on Phase 2, which focuses on researching the 18 properties built in the 1920s. We are pleased to share that two properties have already been documented and published on the St. Pete Wiki, a local site dedicated to community history and knowledge-sharing. We aim to document as many of the remaining properties as possible.

Phase 3 will entail gathering sales material and promotional content from the building boom of the late 1940s through the 1950s. While we have some materials from Sermens Quality Homes, a notable developer in the area, we aim to uncover more.

The final phase, Phase 4, will involve adding neighborhood lore, anecdotes, and photos from our longest-standing residents, making this a living document that will continue to grow over time.

In addition, we plan to highlight our natural assets by including a tree inventory, photos of our beautiful lakes and wildlife, and enhancing our connection to Bear Creek Park. We wish to celebrate our neighborhood as the "Garden Spot of Saint Petersburg", as our original developers aptly named it.

We have uploaded Phase 1 to a Google Drive that anyone with the link can open.  We don't have enough storage on the neighborhood website to store everything here so we have a dedicated Google Drive Folder instead.

LINK TO FILES:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/123rLkQE2xjkw6I1KFxYMwxE1gCznReIi?usp=sharing

We invite all residents to participate in this exciting project. If you own a historic home or have memories or photos of the community that you'd like to share, please feel free to reach out.   

We will post a survey form for you to fill out and make a submission, or you can start by emailing us here through the message center.  If you have documents or photos we could scan we are happy to come to you and scan them, although now you can do that on your phone too!

More updates will follow as we delve into our community's rich history. Thank you for your support!

Best Regards,
Cheri Riley, History Committee Chairperson (6310 Burlington Ave N)

P.S. If you would like to join the History Committee, reach out to Cheri thru the message center.  We would love to have your help.