From earliest times the downtown waterfront was a mix of commercial and recreational use. When St. Petersburg was founded in 1888 the railroad builder Peter Demens built a railroad pier on what is now the site of Demens’ Landing, at the beginning of First Avenue South.. This was to connect the railroad with shipping commerce and thereby grow the economy of St. Petersburg. Along with other early town builders, Demens and the railroad also sought to promote tourism. A large bathing pavilion was built adjacent to the railroad pier for the use of tourists. The railroad pier was eventually taken over by the Henry B. Plant’s Sanford and St. Petersburg Railroad, successor to Peter Demens’ Orange Belt Railroad. Plant and his associates exercised what amounted to a monopoly on major shipping in St. Petersburg.

In 1901 the owners of the passenger steamer Anthea decided to deepen the boat channel to their Central Avenue dock. Concerned that a new channel would weaken their commercial position, the directors of the Plant System obtained an injunction blocking the deepening of the channel. This action enraged the local business community, which countered with a plan to terminate the railroad pier’s monopoly. Led by A. P. Avery, a former baker turned banker, the businessmen dredged a T-shaped channel that would open the shoreline between Central Avenue and First Avenue North to deep-draft vessels. B. E. Coe did the dredging, and the channel was therefore known as the Little Coe Channel. This was the first step in the creation of a port in St. Petersburg that could compete with the port of Tampa.

The city’s waterfront was rapidly becoming littered with unkempt docks and smelly fish processing houses. There also was F. A. Davis’ electric power plant with two tall smoking stacks. At one point the Board of Trade issued a report declaring: “We found that nearly the whole water front was in an unsanitary and unsightly condition—decaying seaweed and other vegetable, as well as animal matter, produced obnoxious odors, rendering residence along the front almost intolerable and beyond all question detrimental to health….the general appearance of decay and neglect between the two docks—old boats, rotting piers, all sorts of riff-raff, and especially where the outgoing tide leaves large stretches of sand covered with a variety of animal and vegetable matter in all stages of decay—does not well comport with a live, progressive city such as St. Petersburg claims to be.”

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