Staring out at the red-brick streets of Ybor City’s historic downtown district is Tampa’s only GameTime, a video game arcade and restaurant chain. Ninety years ago, this towering concrete building was instead a small wooden home, part of the original Ybor City “slum” neighborhoods. 

The building is the subject of one of the many photographs in a newly unveiled collection from USF Libraries titled, “The Ybor City Dwelling Album: Photos from the Great Depression, Then and Now.” 

The collection, which includes archived photos from USF Libraries paired with contemporary recreations by local photographer Chip Weiner, was officially unveiled on Oct. 22.

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The project is a part of USF Libraries “Tampa Through Time Portal,” an online map that pins archival photographs and resources to their original locations. 

Andy Huse is the curator for Florida Studies at the USF Tampa Library. He said the Tampa Through Time Portal provides audiences with a new way to view the Library’s materials. 

USF Libraries used geo-location technology to pair the photographs to present-day locations. Huse said the system will be useful to viewers who might not want to navigate the catalog or are more interested in hyper-local events.

“What we try to do is make something that would be palatable for anyone who’s interested in Ybor City’s history,” Huse said.

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Users interested in discovering more about Ybor City’s history can find a variety of materials on the site. 

The Ybor City Dwelling Album is one of six completed albums about the city. 

The album’s sections include written resources contextualizing the original photographs, side-by-side comparisons of the new pictures and an interactive 10-stop trail that users can follow to see the photograph’s real-life locations.  

All of the original photographs come from USF’s Tony Pizzo collection, a catalog donated to the Library by the local historian before he died in 1994. The exact photographer was never determined and the pictures were most likely given to Pizzo for safekeeping, Huse said. 

“Tony Pizzo was kind of Tampa’s unofficial historian for many years,” Huse said. “It really struck us because it provides a different look at Ybor city and its history than visually what we’re used to.”

Much of Tampa and Ybor’s historical photography is an incomplete representation of what the city looked like for many inhabitants, Huse said. The city was most commonly captured by commercial photographers, hired to take pictures of homes or personal businesses. 

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Stephanie Mackin, an assistant librarian who worked closely on the collection, said the album provides insight into what the rest of the city’s local neighborhoods looked like between the 1930s and 40s. 

“For me, it’s most impactful to see how the everyday person was living in Ybor City at the time, the people who were doing the work,” Mackin said.

The materials in the album aim to shed light on Ybor City’s slum clearance efforts, later known as urban renewal, according to the collection’s event invitation.

Photos in the album capture Ybor City before Tampa’s “urban renewal” efforts in the 1960s, redeveloping lower-income real estate to make cities look more appealing to investors.

Weiner, a Tampa-based photojournalist who works closely with USF Libraries, was asked to investigate the history behind the photos. The project grew from there, Mackin said. 

Weiner declined to comment on the album. 

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USF Libraries will continue to update the Tampa Through Time Portal as it archives the history of more photos. 

USF Libraries is working with Tampa Community Archiving to create a system for local residents to provide their own historical materials. The system will allow residents to share items without having to donate the pieces. 

Mackin said she feels many people don’t bring their historical documents in because they don’t feel ready to let go of them. 

“I think it’s important sometimes for those types of items, especially if they represent the community, to stay in the community,” Mackin said. “We just want to be there as the support system.”

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