The Peter O. Knight Cottage

Drive down Hyde Park Avenue just south of Cleveland Street and you'll pass a small Victorian cottage that's easy to miss next to the bigger homes around it. It belonged to one of the most powerful men in Tampa's history, and it was built before he was powerful at all.

Who Was Peter O. Knight?

Peter Oliphant Knight was born in Freeburg, Pennsylvania, in 1865 and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1886, the same year he married Lillie Frierson. He served in the Florida Legislature, then moved to Tampa from Fort Myers in 1889 to become the law partner of Joseph B. Wall.

Over the next half century, Knight's fingerprints ended up on almost every corner of Tampa:

• Public office: He served on the Tampa City Council and as Hillsborough County's state attorney from 1893 to 1899.
• Power and transit: He was president of Tampa Electric Company from 1924 until his death in 1946, and the Tampa Historical Society's marker credits him with providing five-cent trolley service for many years.
• Business: He helped organize the Exchange National Bank and the Tampa Gas Company and was involved with the Tampa Union Station Company, among many others.
• Law: He is the "Knight" in Holland & Knight, the law firm that still carries his name.
• Aviation: He helped secure financing for the municipal airport on Davis Islands, which is why it is called Peter O. Knight Airport today.

A Cottage Built by Ship Carpenters

The Knights' first Hyde Park home was built by ship carpenters in 1890. It is a Folk Victorian cottage of roughly 1,700 square feet, with gingerbread trim and a detail most people walk right past: a pair of hand-carved wooden lovebirds in the front gables. It's often called the Knights' honeymoon cottage.

The family didn't stay small for long. As Knight's career took off, they built a much larger house just two blocks south. But it's the modest cottage that survived and became a landmark.

Hyde Park Was Just Getting Started

When the Knights moved in, Hyde Park was Tampa's brand-new suburb across the river. Henry B. Plant's railroad and his Tampa Bay Hotel, which opened in 1891, were turning the west bank into the place to build. Within a few decades the neighborhood filled with Victorian, Colonial Revival, and bungalow homes.

Today the Hyde Park Historic District covers about 367 acres and more than 1,200 buildings. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and became a local historic district in 1988. The Knight cottage is one of its early homes, and the City of Tampa designated it an individual landmark in 2006.

I wrote more about the neighborhood in my Hyde Park neighborhood guide, and you can hear its story in our Historic Hyde Park neighborhood song.

The Cottage Today

The house now serves as the headquarters of the Tampa Historical Society, which has spent decades preserving the history of the city Knight helped build. A Tampa Historical Society marker, erected November 27, 1978, tells his story out front. It's a fitting second life for the house.

Living in Historic Hyde Park

Over 135 years after the Knights moved in, Hyde Park is still one of Tampa's most sought-after neighborhoods. Historic homes sit beside new construction, townhomes, and condos, all minutes from Bayshore Boulevard, Hyde Park Village, and downtown. Buying in a historic district comes with its own rules for renovations and additions, so it pays to work with someone who knows the process. Start with my guide to buying historic homes in South Tampa.

"I've driven past this cottage my whole life. It's a good reminder that even the people who built Tampa started somewhere small." — Ignacio Toraño