Davis Islands — Tampa, Florida

Davis Islands is a South Tampa neighborhood set in Hillsborough Bay at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, a short bridge crossing from downtown Tampa. The City of Tampa neighborhood page states that Davis Islands was created in the 1920's by developer and Tampa native D.P. Davis from two small natural islands, Little Grassy Key and Big Grassy Key, and that the land was raised with mud dredged from the bay bottom.

The plural name has a physical basis. According to the City of Tampa, a canal fully separates a portion of the land from the rest, so Davis Islands is technically an archipelago. The city adds that the islands originally numbered three, but filling the end of one canal to make room for a runway at Peter O. Knight Airport joined the two largest islands at their southern ends, leaving two.

Public institutions listed by the City of Tampa on the islands include Peter O. Knight Airport, the Davis Islands Yacht Club, Tampa General Hospital, the Sandra Freedman Tennis Complex, the Roy Jenkins aquatic center, Marjorie Park and the Marjorie Park Municipal Yacht Basin. City capital project listings place the neighborhood in Tampa City Council District 4.

The two Grassy islands long predate the neighborhood. A history series by Rodney Kite-Powell of the Tampa Bay History Center, published by the Davis Islands Civic Association, explains that the delta islands formed from Hillsborough River sediment and appear without names on early sixteenth century Spanish maps of Tampa Bay. In the 1820s they fell inside the Fort Brooke military reservation, and the larger one picked up the name Depot Key.

Dredging for Tampa shipping reshaped the islands decades before D.P. Davis arrived. The same history records that cypress tree stumps turned up in eight feet of water just south of Big Grassy Island during an 1880s channel project, evidence that Hillsborough Bay was once a freshwater cypress swamp. A channel cut in the early 1900s split Little Grassy Island, and the piece east of the channel became Seddon Island, today's Harbour Island.

The city itself took an early interest. On June 8, 1920, Tampa City Council put a non-binding referendum to voters on buying Little Grassy Island for a city park, and it passed 694 to 692. The city bought the island on May 9, 1921, for $25,000. Both Grassy islands went completely under water in the 1921 Hurricane, three years before dredging began for Davis Islands.

In early 1924 D.P. Davis began assembling the site. The Davis Islands Civic Association account of the acquisition describes a contract with the City of Tampa to buy Little Grassy Island and the city's share of Big Grassy Island, plus permission to fill the surrounding submerged lands. Negotiations ran almost daily in the Tampa Morning Tribune, and a group of Bayshore Boulevard residents sent a written protest to the Tampa City Commission on February 12, 1924, objecting to the loss of their Hillsborough Bay view.

Writing in Tampa Magazine in 2020, Kite-Powell records that Davis dredged sand from the bay bottom to enlarge and shape three islands. Sales opened in early October 1924, and on October 4 Davis sold all 300 available lots within three hours for a total of $1,683,000. Most of those sales were promissory notes rather than cash, and Davis kept roughly 5 percent of the day's total.

The plan promised a self-contained town in Hillsborough Bay. Tampa Magazine lists a golf course, hotels, apartments, canals and parks among the promises that were realized, along with a business district centered on the Bay Isle Building, completed in 1925. Houses followed design rules set by D. P. Davis Properties, which favored Mediterranean Revival, Italianate and Spanish styles in soft pastel colors. The Mirasol, the Palace of Florence and the Palmarin Hotel, now known as Hudson Manor, were among the early hotel and apartment buildings on Davis Islands.

The Florida land boom turned in 1926. According to the Davis Islands Civic Association, only $30,000 in mortgage payments arrived on Davis Islands that spring instead of an expected four million dollars in second payments. Peter O. Knight, then president of Tampa Electric Company, persuaded the Boston engineering firm Stone and Webster to buy the project, and its new subsidiary purchased Davis Islands on August 2, 1926. Tampa Magazine dates the death of D.P. Davis, at sea, to October 13, 1926.

Work on Davis Islands continued under the new owners. The nine-hole golf course, designed by A. W. Tillinghast and laid out across the southern half of the islands, opened with festivities on December 31, 1928. The original Davis Islands Bridge was dedicated in 1929, four years later than planned, and the same year the City of Tampa records that the Davis Island Swimming Pool was built at a cost of $75,000.

Growth through the 1930s on Davis Islands was slow but steady. The 1930s history counts 115 structures on the property in 1931, including 92 homes, and 203 structures by 1941. Construction of the Works Progress Administration funded downtown airport began in June 1934 at the southeastern end of the islands, and it was named Peter O. Knight Airport after the man credited with saving Davis Islands.

Ownership returned to Tampa hands in 1945. The World War II history reports that a syndicate led by W. Howard Frankland took over Davis Islands, Incorporated on October 22, 1945, a sale that covered between 800 and 1000 lots and the Davis Islands Country Club. During the war the Mirasol and the Mirasol Plaza hotels had housed military personnel training in Tampa.

The postwar boom filled the empty lots. The 1950s history counts over two hundred homes built on Davis Islands between 1946 and 1951. The City of Tampa sold land once reserved for a large park at the southern end, and on August 10 and 11, 1954, 56 of 73 city lots sold for $173,440. Tampa Fire Department Station 17 opened on the islands in 1958, housing reached 861 units in 1956, and by 1961 roughly 74 percent of the present buildings on Davis Islands had been built.

Several original landmarks did not survive the expansion. The golf course became the Byars Thompson addition in the mid-1950s, its country club building was demolished by 1966, and the Davis Islands Coliseum, completed in 1925 with seats for 5,000, burned in the mid-1970s. The 1920s bridge gave way to two wider bridges in the 1960s, and new tennis courts named for former Tampa mayor Sandra Freedman replaced the original clay courts lost to hospital growth.

The neighborhood plan dates from 2007. According to the Davis Islands Civic Association, the community approved the Davis Islands Community Plan on June 6, 2007, and Tampa City Council approved it on November 15, 2007. A Stewardship Team formed in January 2008 and finished the plan's strategic actions on June 25, 2008.

That plan led directly to street work on Davis Boulevard. The City of Tampa Mobility Department describes the Davis Boulevard Complete Streets project, which resurfaces the road from the roundabout at Severn Avenue to the Davis Islands Bridge in three segments, as initiated in response to the Davis Islands Community Plan. On April 4, 2022, the City of Tampa reported that Phase I had added 5,150 linear feet of bike lanes and Phase II another 2,800 linear feet, with Phase III planned for four-way stops at Chesapeake, Biscayne and Barbados avenues in the Davis Islands Village.

Water infrastructure is a recurring public expense on the islands. The City of Tampa bid a Davis Islands Seawall Repair contract, 15-C-00025, with bids opened on March 24, 2015, and its neighborhood page lists a $1,500,000 dock and boardwalk replacement for the Davis Islands Seaplane Basin mooring field. In July 2025 the City of Tampa announced that Roy Jenkins Pool had reopened nine months after Hurricane Helene inundated it, with repairs totaling more than $600,000.