Not all of Welch\u2019s work catered to seasonal residents though. <\/p>\n
That same year, he built the Parks Apartments at 1151 34th Avenue North for year-round living. <\/p>\n
Designed to combat Florida\u2019s heat, each unit featured enclosed front and rear porches, along with windows in every room to maximize airflow and ventilation. Rents began at $50 per month.<\/p>\n
Welch also contributed to the city\u2019s recreational life. <\/p>\n
He constructed the St. Petersburg Roque Club building at Mirror Lake, built and donated the city\u2019s first outdoor basketball court, and sponsored a baseball team, the \u00a0\u201cWelchmen\u201d, which won St. Petersburg\u2019s first City Baseball League championship.<\/p>\n
Like so many developers, Welch\u2019s success was halted by the collapse of the Florida land boom in 1928, followed by the onset of the Great Depression. <\/p>\n
Forced to seek work elsewhere, he traveled to Alabama and back to Indiana to support his family.<\/p>\n
He returned to St. Petersburg briefly in 1939, but in 1944 relocated to Tennessee, where he built housing for military personnel and workers involved in the atomic bomb project.<\/p>\n
Welch came back once again in 1957. In his later years, he built homes in the Gateway Mall area and oversaw construction of the Derby Club at Derby Lane. <\/p>\n
He retired at 83 and passed away in 1989 at the age of 94.<\/p>\n
Today, though his name is less widely known, M.B. Welch\u2019s legacy is written across the city \u2013 one structure at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not all of Welch\u2019s work catered to seasonal residents though. That same year, he built the Parks Apartments…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-252642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}