Dobyville — Tampa, Florida

Dobyville was a Black neighborhood that grew on the northwest edge of Hyde Park in the era of segregation. The City of Tampa SoulWalk marker states that it was named for long-time resident Richard Cornelius Doby and was also called West Hyde Park, and that by the 1920s Dobyville ranked among Tampa's primary African-American neighborhoods. The marker sets its approximate historic limits at Gray Street on the north, Horatio Street on the south, Rome Avenue on the west and Willow Avenue on the east.

Those lines were never fixed. 83 Degrees Media reported in March 2022 that the community also went by North Hyde Park, Courier City and Oscawana, and, drawing on the Tampa Bay History Center, described a looser outline reaching from North Willow at Fig Street south to Swann Avenue, west to South Albany and north to Kennedy Boulevard. Today the former Dobyville area is split by Kennedy Boulevard and the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, which explains why so little of it reads as a single place on a modern map of South Tampa.

Hillsborough County profiles Doby in its Faces Behind the Places series. It states that Richard Cornelius Doby was born in Alachua County, Florida, on April 25, 1865, while noting that some sources give 1864 or 1867, and that his parents were natives of South Carolina. Historians assume the family moved to what is now the Hyde Park area of Tampa around the time of his birth. Doby had no formal education but owned businesses delivering ice and collecting garbage, and used the income to buy real estate in West Hyde Park and elsewhere in Tampa. The county states he is thought to have died in 1937 or 1938.

His gifts shaped the neighborhood that carries his name. According to the county, Doby bought and donated land for the Dobyville School, helped fund a church, and in 1901 bought and gave land for Zion Cemetery, the first cemetery in the city specifically for Black people. The SoulWalk marker adds that he was the grandfather of Inez Doby, a noted Hillsborough County educator.

Hillsborough County estimates that about 10 percent of Tampa's Black population lived in Dobyville by the late 1920s, partly because many residents worked nearby as launderers, gardeners, butlers and in other jobs for wealthy Hyde Park households. FOX 13 reported in 2025 that the Doby land gifts served a community of roughly 3,000 Black residents, and that the school built on donated land was first West Hyde Park Grammar School and later the Dobyville School.

Dobyville was not only a workers' quarter. In a 2022 FOX 13 report, a Tampa Bay History Center historian described churches, a school, businesses and middle-class families who ran their own enterprises. The county article describes an aspirational, middle-class Dobyville with several schools, a church and Black-owned businesses. One surviving landmark is the old Seybold Bakery, which 83 Degrees Media reports has been converted into condominiums called Seybold Lofts.

The neighborhood also shaped Tampa's school map. Tampa Magazines notes that the 1956 opening of Blake High School in West Tampa reflected the number of African American students living in West Tampa and northwest Hyde Park (Dobyville) at the time.

The SoulWalk marker identifies two blows. First, after zoning was changed in the 1950s to accommodate industrial uses and restrict construction of new homes, the Dobyville population north of Kennedy Boulevard declined. Second, the South Crosstown Expressway, which opened in 1976, required the demolition of many homes and businesses. The marker states that the Dobyville School stayed open until 1966, and FOX 13, citing a City of Tampa presentation, reported that the school was demolished to make way for the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway along with many neighborhood homes and businesses.

FOX 13's 2022 report quoted the Tampa Bay History Center on the broader causes: integration, gentrification and the road project that became the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway. 83 Degrees Media noted that what remained of Dobyville had been decaying for decades and that the neighborhood appears on lists of communities destroyed by the late 1960s. Even so, the SoulWalk marker records that several long-time residents still live in the Dobyville area.

Zion Cemetery sat outside Dobyville, north of downtown Tampa, but it was one of Doby's most lasting gifts. 83 Degrees Media, citing Tampa Housing Authority records, reports that Doby founded the 2.5-acre cemetery in 1901 east of Florida Avenue and south of East Virginia Avenue, near Tampa Heights, and sold it in 1907 to the Black-owned Florida Industrial and Commercial Co. The land later passed to developers and was built over until reporting by the Tampa Bay Times brought the burials back to light.

The Tampa Housing Authority, which owns about 1.22 acres of the site, relocated 32 families in 2019 after ground penetrating radar revealed anomalies believed to be intact coffins, according to 83 Degrees Media. The authority planned a Zion Memorial Cemetery Park alongside the redevelopment of Robles Park Village. FOX 13 reported in 2025 that the cemetery site lies beneath the Robles Park Apartments on Florida Avenue.

Recognition began with a marker. Hillsborough County states that in 2007 the Hillsborough County Historical Advisory Council erected a Dobyville historical marker on West Platt Street at South Willow Avenue. 83 Degrees Media reported that the area already lay inside a National Register of Historic Places district but lacked the added protection of a local historic designation, and that 40 to 50 percent of homes in the proposed Tampa expansion area were built before 1933.

FOX 13 reported that applications to expand the Hyde Park Local Historic District were submitted in May 2021 by the Spanishtown Creek Neighborhood Association and the Historic Hyde Park Neighborhood Association. After a public question session on August 10, 2022, described by 83 Degrees Media, the Tampa Historic Preservation Commission voted on August 30, 2022, and 83 Degrees Media reported that the commission unanimously recommended the expansion. Hillsborough County states that the Tampa City Council approved the expansion in 2023, and FOX 13 specifies that the district grew to include the portion of Dobyville south of the Crosstown Expressway.

In February 2025 the council went further and designated as a local historic landmark the 1912 house where Richard Doby and his family lived in the 1920s, according to FOX 13. City of Tampa historic preservation manager Dennis Fernandez had told FOX 13 in 2022 that local designation brings design review by the Architectural Review Commission for Dobyville properties inside the district.