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Josiah Richardson and Sulphur Springs Amusement Park; "Tampa's Coney Island"
In 1920, Richardson took a more active ownership role of Sulphur Springs park after years of leasing it to others and began to transform it. From 1921 through 1924 he appears in city directories as the proprietor of the park.
Richardson is credited with building walks, elaborate bathhouses, adding restaurants, docks, a high-dive platform, water slide and toboggan slide. In addition to the pools, bathhouses and alligator farm, there was a dance pavilion, shops and a better shed for the streetcar that was frequented by tourists and Tampans alike. Richardson is also credited with building a beach and tourist cottages which were later converted to year-round homes as tourists made the community their permanent residence. A vibrant commercial area grew up around the “Springs” and development flourished along Nebraska Avenue.
In these days, the rich and famous often frequented natural springs for their healing properties and recreation, but Sulphur Springs tended to attract a more working-class visitor, known as "tin-can tourists" because they often traveled in campers.
Burgert Brothers Collection photos below from the Tampa-Hillsborough County
Public Library
The concrete bridge at Nebraska Avenue
The original Nebraska Ave. in this area was renamed Van Dyke Place, after the family who lived there and operated a gas station there. Van Dyke's Service Station with Hav-a-Tampa Cigar stand on side at 7800 Nebraska Avenue in Sulphur Springs, 1921 Burgert Bros. photos from the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library
Van Dyke's Service Station with Hav-a-Tampa Cigar stand on side at 7800 Nebraska Avenue in Sulphur Springs, 1921 Burgert Bros. photos from the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library
Nebraska Ave. bridge construction on the
Hillsborough River at Sulphur Springs, Dec. 20, 1923
The Sulphur Springs Hotel (Arcade) - 8122 N. Nebraska Ave. Richardson saw the springs as a mecca for vacationers of modest means, but refused to sacrifice quality in the development of its attractions. In 1925 he began construction of the Sulphur Springs Arcade and completed it in 1927. It was built on the former site of the park's wooden roller coaster. The building housed a hotel, apartments, shops, post office, barbershop, sheriff, jail, and bank. It was recognized in Ripley’s Believe it or Not as an entire city under one roof and the first mini mall in America.
The long, two-story double arcade along the front was the hotel's most conspicuous feature, which accounts for the hotel's popular name, Sulphur Springs Arcade. It was a source of pride and convenience for the community for fifty years. Richardson contracted an artist from Europe to decorate the interior of the Arcade, and for the sidewalk he pioneered terrazzo--marble chips laid over concrete that were buffed to a luminous sheen. He spent lavishly to get what he wanted. He so disliked the original glass installed in the arcade's skylight that he replaced it with purple and blue stained glass from Egypt, "almost like a cloud in its design" according to Linda Hope, Sulphur Springs historian. The reinforced concrete building faced east on Nebraska Avenue in a residential area north of the Hillsborough River and Sulphur Springs pool. and had a rectangular plan. The foundation was spread footings. and the walls were masonry with plaster, painted white. The front first floor arcade consisted of sixteen bays. The second floor arcade consisted of approximately forty-five bays.
Porches on the ground floor arcade consisted of reinforced concrete elliptical arches supported on square columns. The second floor porch was similar, except that it had smaller arches. A pent roof was situated between the main flat roof and the second floors sheltering the first and second floor arcades. The second floor had thirty-nine hotel rooms and fourteen apartments and offices. The original number of downstairs shops is not known.
Second floor porch with rocking chairs, Sept. 22, 1930. Burgert Bros. photo from the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library.
Hotel
lobby, Jan. 9, 1934
Sulphur
Springs Hotel/Arcade
The Suphur Springs Arcade, 8100 N. Nebraska Avenue, Aug. 6, 1934 Burgert Bros. photo from the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library.
The Suphur Springs Arcade, 8100 N. Nebraska Richardson Building, Sulphur Springs, near Tampa, Fla. Hillsboro News Co. Postcard, 1934 State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/259636
Hotel
lobby, May 10, 1937
In 1948 “WHBO-1050 Tampa," the first radio station in Florida to broadcast country music full time, came on the air in 1948 with 250 watts of power. Its studios were located in the Sulphur Springs Arcade.
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In
1923 construction began on a new, concrete T-beam
vehicular traffic bridge alongside the steel streetcar bridge,
on what is now Nebraska Avenue. 
Inside
on the ground floor were commercial shops along arcade. On the
ground floor was the central lobby, hotel rooms and apartments. The
stairways were concrete with brass nosings and wrought-iron rails.
The floors consisted of 1" x 4" pine flooring. The wall and
ceiling finish was plaster on metal lath with twenty feet high ceilings
in the ground floor shops. The doors consisted of full panel
doors and fifteen-light beveled glass in wood doors. Interior decorative
features and trim consisted of ornamental plaster cornice with
decorative plaster reliefs at ceiling light fixtures throughout
building. There was natural ventilation through skylights and
electric lighting and cast-iron plumbing.
