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Relics from Tampa Tribune find home at Tampa Bay History Center

 
Framed photographs of Tampa Tribune publishers through 2006 are one of the items the Tampa Bay Times donated to the Tampa Bay History Center.
Framed photographs of Tampa Tribune publishers through 2006 are one of the items the Tampa Bay Times donated to the Tampa Bay History Center.
Published July 1, 2016

TAMPA

The Tampa Tribune published its last daily edition May 3, and its longtime headquarters is soon to be demolished.

But some of the newspaper's artifacts will live on at the Tampa Bay History Center.

Hundreds of Tribune treasures ranging from printing machinery, hot metal press plates and custom murals were turned over to the History Center by the Tampa Bay Times, which bought and closed the paper.

Curator Rodney Kite-Powell said the museum is grateful for the donation.

"It's our mission to preserve and teach about our past," he said. "We need to keep these things or else they'll get thrown away."

The newspaper began as the Tampa Morning Tribune in 1893 when Wallace Stovall moved his news operations to Tampa from Bartow, and became the daily Tampa Tribune two years later.

It had multiple owners before Media General sold it in 2012 to California-based Revolution Capital for $9.5 million. Then, last July, Revolution sold the paper's downtown Tampa building to South Florida developers who plan to build an apartment complex.

Kite-Powell said the museum will eventually display ordinary items that capture the human element of day-to-day life in journalism.

Among the more memorable artifacts are seven murals painted by Joan Griffin Burpe in the mid 1970s. The paintings were created to honor the press operators who produced the paper each night.

To Donna Reed, the murals are a reminder of the early days of journalism. Reed worked at the Tribune as a reporter and later on as the managing editor, and saw the paintings every time she came into work.

"I think it's a great gift to the readers of the Tampa Tribune," she said.

The murals were commissioned by J. Stewart Bryan, a publisher in the '70s, who "had a great love of history and art," she said. "A big piece of Tampa's history is preserved."

Reed said she'll visit the museum when the display is up.

Kite-Powell said the museum is still in the process of organizing the influx of pieces and is not sure when an exhibit will be ready.

He said the newspaper artifacts will show how the news was gathered and produced in an earlier time.

"We always want people to come away with learning something they didn't have before," he said. "I think we really want to show that we have a long, important history."

Contact Ariana Figueroa at afigueroa@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3350. Follow @ArianaLFigueroa.