ESSAY: Smoke on the Water: The Lost Glory of the Davis Islands Coliseum

This story happened before the Tampa you know became what it is today. Before bright lights from downtown towers reflected off the shimmering waters of the Bay. Four decades before Rocky the Bull was first sketched out by Ray Cooper to be sold as a bookstore toy. Even prior to Davis Islands being known as the exclusive enclave of dog walkers and historic architecture, there was music audible on the muggy evening breezes. They say you could hear it from the seawall - big band music echoing across the channel that had yet to see a cruise ship. There was laughter tumbling out the windows like spilled bubbly in that pre-Prohibition era. Men in pressed suits and women feathered gowns, twirling their nights away under chandeliers long since lost to time. Ice being scooped into highball glasses barely quicker than it could melt. The warm buzz of summer nights when Tampa was coming in to its own. In the decade where this burgeoning port city would see its population double, there arose a palace. Well. A coliseum. Not Roman, more Riviera - a Moorish-Mediterranean marvel rising like a desert mirage. Opening in 1925, this ode to luxury anchored D.P. Davis’s vision of a Florida utopia. The Davis Islands Coliseum, nearly 40,000 square feet of tile, plaster, hardwood, and high society. All the trappings and grand style of Europe, right here in America. It was, depending who you ask, the finest dance hall south of Atlanta - or maybe the grandest failure in Tampa's gilded past. Or, as many things were before social media eliminated nuance from society: It was both. —A Ballroom Built on Sand— D.P. Davis was part dreamer, part huckster - a land speculator with a vision and a press agent worthy of the best snake oil salesmen traveling the Midwest. He dredged muck from Tampa Bay to build the islands bearing his name, then sold them as a Mediterranean paradise. The Coliseum was the crown jewel in this gold-plated tiara. Some say it cost upwards of $100,000 - a fortune in 1925 - and open