Rheba Sutton White Chapel

The Florida Methodist Conference College, now Florida Southern College, relocated its campus to present-day Palm Harbor in 1902 after purchasing the San Marino Hotel at Florida Avenue and Omaha Street. In 1904, the college built an administration building beside the hotel that included a 700-seat chapel for religious services. A devastating fire destroyed the main school and administration buildings in 1921, and volunteers hauled the handmade bricks from the administration building ruins to this site and cleaned them by hand. Those salvaged bricks were used to build the first Palm Harbor United Methodist Church in 1924, and the bell in the church steeple was also rescued from the college. In the 1970s, Methodists built a larger sanctuary in Palm Harbor, but the former church building continued serving the community as its first library and later a community food pantry. Pinellas County purchased the property in 1999, restored the church, and built the adjacent Harbor Hall. In 2005, the historic building was rededicated to Rheba Sutton, a lifelong Palm Harbor resident who twice fought to stop demolition of the chapel.

Palm Harbor, Florida · United States