A historic home built for an incredibly influential editor of the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times), is now on the market in the Historic Old Northeast neighborhood.

Located at 143 13th Avenue N, the Mediterranean-style home was built in the early 1920s for William Straub, who played a major role in the early development of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, and most notably served as the editor of the St. Petersburg Times for 38 years.

Straub, like many Tampa Bay transplants, was born in Michigan and after owning and operating a newspaper in the Dakota Territory in his 20s, moved to St. Petersburg for health reasons in 1900.

in 1901, he purchased the St. Petersburg Weekly Times for $1,300 (roughly $47,000 today) and used his position to market the area as a tourist destination and to advocate for the separation of West Hillsborough County (now known as Pinellas Couunty) from Hillsborough County.

In late 1912, Pinellas County seceded from Hillsborough and Straub was largely credited for his role in the split. That same year, Straub sold his majority ownership of the paper to Paul Poynter, but continued to work with the Times as an associate editor until his death in 1939.

Besides his role at the paper, Straub served as the city’s postmaster until 1922, and he helped create the St. Petersburg Rotary Club, as well as the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce.

But today, Straub’s work is probably most noticeable in the public spaces he helped create. Straub was a major catalyst for cleaning up the City of St. Petersburg’s waterfront, and converting the area into public parks (one of which is named in his honor today).

A 1991 article from the St. Petersburg Times noted that Straub “led the effort to free the downtown waterfront from warehouses, machine shops and fish markets so that it could belong to the people. He was such a crusader for waterfront parks that his friends said he had “waterfront on the brain.”

Now you can own a piece of St. Petersburg history.

Straub’s 3,198-square-foot home comes with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, as well as Cuban tiling and heart of pine floors, two wood-burning fireplaces, an incredibly rare basement, and a detached two-car garage with a walk-up efficiency apartment.

The Straub house is currently asking $1,895,000, and the listing agents are Cynthia Serra and Dan Casper of Smith & Associates Real Estate.