Charles Roser is credited by some for inventing the Fig Newton, but he also spent the later half of his years as a prominent developer in St. Petersburg, and now one of the initial homes built in his historic Roser Park neighborhood is for sale.
Located at 682 Roser Park Dr. S, the home was built in 1910, which is actually a year before Roser began building his namesake development. The 2,244-square-foot home comes with three bedrooms and three bathrooms, as well as a fireplace, a sun room, a large front porch and more, says the listing.
It’s unclear exactly who was the original owner of this home, though one of the earliest known owners was hardware store manager and local charter captain William J. Longman, who in 1920 bought multiple lots from Roser.
Lured by the Florida Land Boom, Roser and his wife Ruth moved from Kenton, Ohio to St. Pete in 1910, after he sold his cookie business along with the rights to his Fig Newton creation to Nabisco for about $1 million, some historians believe. Nabisco has never acknowledged the claim.
In 1911, he purchased 10-acres of citrus farm and a home along Booker Creek for $12,000 from local politician C.D. Hammond, who famously claimed to be the first person to call Teddy Roosevelt “Mr. President” after William McKinley’s assassination in 1901.
Naysayers called the tract of land a “mud hole,” but Roser leveraged the investment into 60 lots in the the beginning, each facing “brick streets and sidewalks,” according to the Evening Independent.
Roser Park would eventually boast 80 lots, and a few years later he donated five acres for the completion of the nearby Roser Park School, which opened in 1913. Before his death in 1937, Roser also built the Royal Palm Hotel on Fifth Street S, and established the Mercy Hospital for Black residents.
This piece of Roser Park history is currently asking $949,000, and the listing agent is Nancy Baird of the Baird Realty Group.
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