St. Petersburg shares its name with the great Russian city, and that is no accident. When the new railroad town needed a name in 1888, the story goes that its two founders settled it the simplest way they could — with a coin toss. Peter Demens, a Russian émigré, won, and named the place for St. Petersburg, the imperial capital of his homeland. The man he beat, General John C. Williams of Detroit, got to name the town’s first grand hotel, and called it the Detroit Hotel. The Florida St. Petersburg has gone its own sunlit way ever since — though locals long ago shortened the whole mouthful, fondly, to “St. Pete.”
Today St. Petersburg is sun and saltwater, museums and murals, a pier out over the bay and a downtown that hums. Our St. Petersburg designs gather that identity — the alligator emblem, the Sunshine City, the waterfront and the arts — into wearable form. It is a Florida city that knows exactly what it is. St. Petersburg, Florida — the Sunshine City on the bay, where the first airline took flight and the murals never fade.
Why People Visit St Petersburg
St. Petersburg mixes sunshine, shoreline, and a genuine arts scene in a way few Florida cities can. Visitors come for the waterfront museums and murals, the pier and the bayfront parks, the nearby Gulf beaches, and the easy, bright pace of a city that has earned its Sunshine City name for more than a century. History sits comfortably beside everyday life here, from the spot where the first airline took flight to the gardens and galleries downtown, and the water is never more than a few blocks away.
