Discovered St. Petersburg, Florida, the beautiful old Florida resort city which retains that charm, and elegance, the old mixed with the new, with city parks scattered around and a wide strip of parkland stretching along Tampa Bay, with a few high rise modern pastel colored condos set back from the shore. The downtown area is quiet and slow paced, combining smooth international style and Mediterranean revival masonry buildings, but not too many skyscrapers. The style reminded me of Pasadena with its graceful 1920s architecture, or Santa Barbara, where the sea is ever visible. St. Petersburg’s waterfront and Bayshore Drive are lined with parks, the Yacht Club, aquatic center, palm arboretum, and museums. St. Petersburg lies on a peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico and Tampa Bay, connected by low bridges, is a city where it is easy to be near the water, driving over the causeways or sitting on one of the many green, empty park benches, looking out at the flat gray water of Tampa Bay, near the pier, with no land in sight, watching the gulls and cranes, and billowy white clouds above. I enjoyed the view in Vinoy Park, feeding the tame squirrels and having my lunch, a New York deli sandwich, with piled on hot pastrami, from Lucky Dill Deli on Central Avenue. I could have had a Sabrett hot dog from a street cart, my chili cheese of choice in Washington. But, how often do you find a New York deli? I was staying downtown at the older boutique Hollander Hotel, a great choice, with an attached pastries shop, and long front porch with overstuffed chairs to enjoy the rainy November evenings.

On my second day, I went out for eggs, bacon, and strong French coffee at “Apropos,” near the Hollander, past the open air post office on 4h Avenue. Apropos is a small French style cafe, with one room containing about six modest black tables, a black and white marble floor, and Frank Sinatra’s “New York” playing in the background It is run by a European couple. Like the Hollander, it was recommended to me by my Helena friends, John and Kathy Driscoll. Best of all, breakfast included a few of those sweet, small black grapes you get in neighborhood Parisian groceries. From the cafe, I walked downtown to the waterfront and discovered the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), established in 1965, low and spreading, about the size of the Norton Simon in Pasadena, with a high quality permanent collection of paintings and sculpture from the ancient world, plus wonderful early 20th Century European and American works. There were, for me, two magical rooms. The first, with paintings from the early 20th Century “Ashcan” School, plus Robert Henri and John Sloan and The Ten, plus some European Impressionists, was an almost white, pale blue or light green, room, with a light gray marble entryway and trim, white ceiling, hard wood flooring, and lots of good indirect lighting. My favorites here included Guy Penne du Bois‘ well known painting entitled “Cafe Madrid, Mr. and Mrs. Chester Dale,” 1926, with simplified figures as from an illustration, of the wealthy couple having dinner before a dark blue evening background. It was a gift from a member of the Dale family. There was also a George Luks‘ canvas, “The Magician,” 1908, of a Saxiphone player, all browns, creating a powerful dark palette, and a powerful Georgia O’Keefe 1930 painting of two reddish (pink adobe) colored plain hills with scattered pinons, set against a blue sky with swirling white clouds. This simple painting is one of the best O’Keefe’s anywhere.

There was another special room, bright yellow with gray marble trim, which included American Impressionist pieces, including Randall Davey’s 1920 masterpiece, “Portrait of Paul Robeson,” the subject sitting in a chair turning towards the artist, and wearing a white shirt. The portrait was done in broad brush strokes with coffee browns. Willard Metcalf’s “The Mountain,” 1909, showed a smooth, barren mountainside done in sage and orange. Theodore Robinson’s 1890 “Capri and Mt. Solano,” showed a small, whitewashed Greek village set against a large granite mountain, with the houses and grassy fields appearing windswept, almost in motion. The room included a John Henry Twachtman, “Venice Landscape,” 1878, bright green and verdant, with none of the usual canals, showing instead the lush countryside of the Veneto with the city in the distance. There was a George Innes, “Early Moonrise,” 1893, ethereal with moon haze, and a more realistic piece, entitled “Bretagne Soldier,” 1880 by Thomas Hovenden, of a soldier in brown uniform with purple spade (purple heart) denoting military status embroidered on the brown rumpled and stitched uniform. Other favorites in the two rooms, included Camille Corot’s “Three Bathers,” 1865, showing Corot’s Barbizon influence, with the theme of nature and the soft lines at dusk. It was his typically dark canvas, of three nude maidens in a luminous stream, with a filagree of golden leaves in upper tree branches silhouetted against the luminous sky. The docent pointed out that there was a barely discernible “paint over” on the maidens, where there had originally been another painting beneath. Paul Cezanne’s “Orchard, Cote St. Denis at Pointouche,” 1877, showed a close up small section of a forest, a composition of densely packed tree trunks in brown amid the green grass, showing how Cezanne combined cylinders, cones, and spheres to create objects in his Cubist manner. Much of the strokes were done with palette knife. There was a beautiful Johannes Jongkind, “The Schie near Rotterdam,” 1867, of a Dutch landscape, and misty moon appearing amid gray clouds above a luminous sky. The description said “light and atmosphere is what it is all about.” There were two Monets, one of his foggy “Houses of Parliament,” 1904, with touches of pink and white on the light blue canvas, and his “Springtime in Giverny,” 1885, with a village and steeple in the background and sloping hill and orchard in the foreground combining pink blossoms amid tall green grass. There was a wonderful Paul Gauguin, “Goose Girl,” 1888, of a young Breton girl tending white geese in the field, a composite of bright blues (pond), oranges, and reds in his flat, almost expressionistic style. This was the best Gauguin I have seen outside the Phillips Gallery in Washington. There was a sculpture of note, a dark brown bust by Berte Morrisot of her seven year old daughter “Julie Manet,” originally done in plaster, then covered with bronze plate. A new discovery for me was the still life by John Frederick Peto, of a pipe and box, tromp l’oil Revolutionary War era, similar to Hartnett’s still life, not dated, but Peto lived from 1854-1907. There was also a Boudain, “Laundresses on the Shore at La Touques,” 1883, unusual in that the subjects were not his usual straw hatted, leisure class families with parasols and hoop skirts enjoying the beach. There was a George Bellows, of boats at harbor on a silver day, 1912, and a Childe Hassam, “Home Sweet Home Cottage,” of a vine covered Federal house in East Hampton, 1916.

In the antiquities section, there was a wonderful Cycladic sculpture of a woman, 2500 BCE, with the usual crossed arms and, in this case, knees slightly bent, one of the first full body Cycladic figures I have seen There were a number of good black figure, red figure, and white figure Greek wine vessels, especially a white amphora, dated 575 BCE. The docent said white came last in order, and was often funerial or honorary. There was an elegant Costa Rican gold pendant, entitled “Avian,” of a bird in flight, almost constructivist, with very thin wings, dated 6th to 9th Century AD, designed for the conquering Spaniards who were attracted to gold. In the applied arts, there were Sevres porecelain, including “Vases de Varnennes,” 1900, of blossoms on a tourquoise background. There was a pair of beautiful Wedgewood renditions of Etruscan urns, dull black with red figures, dated 1790-1800, plus a 19th Century Austrian neo-Classical bench with a needlework cushion and matching chair with fan shaped back rest, each made of sandalwood. From the Asian collection, the most impressive item was perhaps the 19th Century Indian bronze of the God Shiva, dancing, with hair flayed out, in the ring of fire, and standing on a dwarf, stamping on the dwarfing of the mind. There was also an Hindu temple in miniature, a “Jaira,” with elephant figures on the roof corners stomping out ignorance. From the Japanese Edo period, there was a wood carving of seated priest, dated 1615. Finally, there was an impressive Han Dynasty standing horse, from China, dated 206 BCE, fierce looking, in terra cotta. According to the docent, these horses were from the Central Asian steppes, were 17 hands high, and were brought to the Chinese emperor, who sent an army of 60,000 warriors to a neighboring kingdom to obtain them after being told they were not for sale. Finally, there was an impressive visiting display of paintings of the ballet star Rudolf Nureyev done by Jaime Wyeth.

That evening, I drove across the causeway to the western beaches facing the Gulf of Mexico stretching from Sarasota to Clearwater I stayed at “Pass-A-Grill” Beach, where I had a grouper sandwich and slaw for dinner on the outdoor terrace at the old green colored Hurricane Restaurant on the beach. Pass-a-Grill is unlike the other St. Petersburg beaches (Treasure Island, etc.) in that it is 1920s Mediterranean revival architecture reminiscent of the bungalows of the Scott and Zelda era. It was a bit hazy as I watched the sunset. I was fighting a cold, but didn’t notice it. There were lots of families watching the luminous sunset and tangerine sky from the second floor bars in the restaurants, and from the white sand beaches, themselves. It was a ritual. There were small gray waves, currents near the shore, moving north westerly. The Gulf beaches run from Pass-A-Grill to Clearwater and the strip is pretty crowded. I almost prefer the tamer Tampa Bay views downtown. Pass-A-Grill, however, is fine, and remote and not crowded, with no high rises. Coming back to St. Petersburg, over the toll causeway bridge, curving above Tropicana Field, passing exclusive resort communities with marinas, I enjoyed the beautiful view of the sunset glinting off the modern 30 story apartment and office buildings in downtown St. Petersburg. It is a nice lifestyle, I was thinking, with the palms and the Gulf and the Bay, and the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, a nice night drive under dark blue skies, water all around,

The next morning, I had eggs and sausages at the Hollander, on the front porch, protected in the midst of a light rain, then went to the Florida Holocaust Museum, established by holocaust survivors. it was modest in size, but had a powerful collection of maps, photographs, and videos documenting the Holocaust and the lively Jewish culture that existed in Europe before it. On the second floor was a gallery devoted to contemporary art dealing with the Holocaust, with work by local and national artists. The centerpiece was an actual railroad car, which was one of many used as transports to Auschwitz, a large stark reminder of the reality of the Holocaust, and also a lot of small exhibits related to individual survivor stories. The most powerful exhibit for me was a small niche containing two pairs of children’s felt shoes, which were displayed with a simple explanation that the shoes had belonged to a two year old girl in Holland (they gave her name) who had been transported with her family to Auschwitz, and who had not survived. After the war, the child’s relatives in the Netherlands had recovered the shoes, which had been left behind. As I left the museum, I wanted to write my thoughts in the visitor book, but was so choked up by the image of the shoes that I had to leave with a lump in my throat. I have been to several Holocaust museums and killing sites, but the shoes and the actual rail car will stick with me. The little girl never made it back. I couldn’t help thinking of my two year old grandson in Tallahassee.

The next day, before departing St. Petersburg, I drove up Central Avenue to Haslams Books, a real institution, the City Lights or Powells of Florida. Everyone in St. Petersburg was friendly and relaxed, and open, the docents, the Hollander staff, the jogger on the walking path feeding the squirrels, the deli waitress who made the point that St. Petersburg is a lot slower paced than Orlando. There was none of the theme park feel of parts of Florida. My son texted me when I got back to Tallahassee, asking how St. Petersburg was. I sent him the message: “a close second to Santa Barbara,” which he knows is my gold standard.