Tampa Heights founded in 1880 by some of Tampa's first settlers is considered to be the first suburb of the city of Tampa even with its such close proximity to downtown. The historic neighborhood has been home to many of Tampa's first doctors, lawyers, and business people. The neighborhood has experienced shifts in demographics as Tampa has grown, as well as surrounding areas and new suburbs for middle and upper class families coming up over decades. However, in recent years the neighborhood has had a resurgence with Tampa thriving after the Great Recession and the city began investing in the area for new business and attempting to revitalize the neighborhood. The addition of new living spaces, renovated homes, small business moving into refuirbished and rezoned spaces, as well as the incredibly successful renovation of the old TECO power plant into Armature Works, has brought a revitalized economy to the historic neighborhood and breathed fresh life into it.
This series of photographs was my attempt to capture the transition of the neighborhood as it has gone through what some would consider gentrification in the recent years. The definitive theme in these pictures is the architecture, and more specifically the power lines. Power lines have a motif in our society of seeming unclean, not polished, as more and more cities move to keep the power lines underground. The juxtaposition of these now successful business in these historic buildings with the traditionally "unpolished" power lines is my attempt to capture this revitalization of a neighborhood with so much history and so much potential.