Tampa Considers Adding Dobyville To Historic Hyde Park District

TAMPA, FL — It was one of the larger Black communities in Tampa Bay during the Jim Crow segregation era starting in the early 1900s.

Dobyville, later known as West Hyde Park, was a working-class neighborhood where the maids, butlers, nannies, cooks and other servants of Hyde Park's wealthy mansion dwellers lived.

With integration, gentrification and the construction of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway through South Tampa, which resulted in many businesses and homes being demolished, most of Dobyville has been lost to history.

But a group of South Tampa residents hope to change that.

Members of the Historic Hyde Park Neighborhood Association and the Hyde Park Spanishtown Creek Civic Association have petitioned the city, asking that the Hyde Park Local Historic District, approved in 1985, be expanded to include Dobyville.

The Tampa Historic Preservation Commission will meet Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Old City Hall, 315 E. Kennedy Blvd., for a second hearing on the proposal before making a recommendation to the Tampa City Council.

The community, which was roughly bordered by North B Street to the north, Swann Avenue to the south, Albany Avenue to the west and Willow Avenue to the east, was named for Richard Cornelius Doby, a well-known Tampa businessman who dabbled in real estate, the sanitation business and other enterprises.

"He was a go-getter," said his great-grandson, Booker Doby, 88. "I've been told that he used to walk down Franklin Street and everybody recognized him, Black and white."

Booker Doby was just 7 years old when his great-grandfather died in 1938 but he said his mother and aunt described him as a smart and generous man who donated land for the Dobyville Elementary School so children in the still-segregated neighborhood wouldn't have to be bused to the nearest Black school, Dunbar Elementary School.

Booker Doby, himself, attended Dobyville School on South Dakota Avenue, which housed students until 1966 and was ultimately demolished to make way for the expressway. "I was the only Doby to go to that school," he said.

Historian Rodney Kite-Powell, director of the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center, has done a great deal of research into Dobyville and now gives lectures and tours on Dobyville.

He said Doby also donated a piece of land he bought in 1901 for $100 for the Zion Cemetery so Black families could bury their loved ones nearby.

Nevertheless, he said there's not a lot of written history on Doby or the community that bears his name.

"It’s interesting. These two places are adjacent," Kite-Powell said. "One, Hyde Park, is incredibly popular and we know all about it. The other is kind of shrouded in mystery."

Dennis Fernandez, manager of the Tampa Historic Preservation Commission, has been working on the request to expand the historic district since May 2001, a process that includes surveying historic homes and businesses in the community.

He said expanding the historic district to include Dobyville would not only protect what few historic structures remain but would ensure that new buildings are architecturally compatible.