The Evolution Of Tampa’s Franklin Street

Tampa’s Doorstep
The city’s first electric lights lined Franklin by 1887. It was the first in the city to be paved, the first to have sidewalks. The city’s first brick building, the Bank of Tampa, was built on Franklin in 1886. In 1885, Tampa’s first streetcar, a steam-powered contraption with passenger cars similar to a freight train’s, rambled up a sand-covered Franklin on a narrow track to a nascent Ybor City. By 1900, electric streetcars traveled up and down the street on 21 miles of track connecting downtown to Ybor, West Tampa, Sulphur Springs and Ballast Point.
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A 120-mile-an-hour high-speed rail line is set to zoom in by 2015.