Most people drive past it on their way somewhere else. The Sulphur Springs Water Tower — a 214-foot concrete cylinder rising out of a residential neighborhood north of downtown Tampa — doesn’t announce itself the way landmarks are supposed to. There’s no grand plaza, no interpretive sign you can read from your car, no gift shop. It just stands there, the way things that have been standing since 1927 tend to do.
I grew up hearing about Sulphur Springs as a place that used to be something. And that’s exactly right — it used to be a resort destination. Hard to picture now, but through the 1920s and into the Depression years, Tampans rode streetcars out to this neighborhood to swim in the natural sulfur springs, eat at pavilions, ride a carousel. The water tower was built to serve that whole operation: the hotels, the pool, the people. When the resort closed and the springs were eventually covered over, the tower stayed. The neighborhood changed around it. The tower did not.
What surprised me the first time I actually stopped — not just noticed it from the highway — was how close you can get to the base. The city owns the structure, and while you can’t go inside, the area immediately around it is accessible. Stand at the base and look straight up and you’ll understand why they call it a tower. It doesn’t feel decorative from down there. It feels structural, almost industrial, like something with serious intentions.
The neighborhood itself is Sulphur Springs, one of Tampa’s older working-class areas, and the blocks surrounding the tower are lived-in in the way that parts of the city closer to the water rarely are anymore. There are churches with reader boards, corner stores, houses with garden beds. It doesn’t feel curated. I mean that as a compliment.
The best reason to come is also the simplest one: the spring run. Sulphur Springs Pool — an outdoor public pool fed partly by the original spring water — sits nearby at 701 E Bird Street, and it’s one of the cheapest swims in the region. Adults get in for a few dollars. The water is cold and slightly sulfurous, which sounds off-putting but is actually the entire point. This is what people came here for a century ago. The pool is seasonal, generally open late spring through summer, so check Tampa Parks and Recreation’s schedule before you go. But if you time it right, you can swim in spring water in a neighborhood pool that most of Tampa has forgotten about, with the old tower visible just up the street.
Getting there from downtown takes maybe fifteen minutes heading north on Nebraska Avenue. There’s street parking. No fee to look at the tower. The pool admission, when it’s open, runs around three to five dollars depending on age.
I keep recommending this to people who think they’ve seen Tampa and are ready to write it off as a highway city with a nice waterfront. The Sulphur Springs Water Tower is the kind of thing that makes you reconsider. It’s not trying to be a destination. It was just built to last, and it did.
