Women’s Town Improvement Association (WTIA) event c. 1910. Photos courtesy of the St. Petersburg Museum of History.
St. Pete Women: A Powerful Force By Tina Stewart Brakebill In honor of Women’s History Month, we are taking a look back at the women’s volunteer organizations, or “clubs,” as they were often called, of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Lemonade Stands, Sidewalks, and Parks Before St. Petersburg was incorporated as a city in 1903, local women organized influential infrastructure improvement campaigns. For example, they banded together in 1891 to push for the town’s first sidewalk, even raising money for the project by selling lemonade and ice cream. In 1893, these same women undertook the work to transform The Park (present-day Williams Park). They lobbied, raised money, and physically helped lay down walks, clear undergrowth, and build a fence. Over the next several decades, this female-centered energy produced a network of women’s clubs including a local branch of the nationally influential Women’s Christian Temperance Union. These organizations pursued a variety of reforms, but arguably the most powerful of these groups was the home-grown Women’s Town Improvement Association (WTIA). In 1913, it moved into its own building across from Williams Park on First Avenue N (now the Church of Scientology’s St. Petersburg LIfe Improvement Center).
The Lobby and the Legislature WTIA members, many of whom had been part of the earlier park improvement efforts, wielded tremendous influence in St. Petersburg. As members of the city’s elite white families, the women had the connections and time to work for popular goals like the
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city’s beautification. They also tackled less popular issues like conservation, temperance, health care, prison reform, education, and voting rights for women. These progressive-minded women led the charge to protect birds and other wildlife, pushed for “blue laws,” and established a “poor-sick” fund to provide the indigent with medicine. The WTIA lobby led to the appointment of St. Petersburg’s first parole officer as well as passage of the state’s first mandatory schoolattendance legislation. Not surprisingly, the first woman to run for the Florida Legislature, Katherine Bell Tippetts, came from the ranks of these reforming women.
Working Women & the YWCA The early 20th century also marked the rapid rise of wage-earning women. Many upper- and middle-class female “club” reformers feared for the health and safety of the women thrust into the working world. As a response, they initiated a variety of campaigns to provide support. One such effort is the YWCA. First organized in the 19th century, the YWCA movement expanded rapidly in the early 20th century. Its facilities offered health classes and employment advice as well as providing women safe places to take breaks (pioneering the idea of a “rest room”), eat an inexpensive meal, or spend the night. Local women financially supported the national efforts of the YWCA until 1919, when St. Petersburg’s size and working population supported the need for its own branch. Soon after, the YWCA moved into its own downtown facility on Second Avenue S (present-day home of Rococo Steak), where volunteers began to hold “Circle Groups” to help women secure safe employment.
