Bartow, FL- Largest city south of Tampa Bay in 1900, now part of the Lakeland Metro Area

The City was found in 1851 as Fort Blount but this was quickly changed after the Civil War to rename it in honor of Francis S. Bartow, the first brigade commander of the Confederate Army to die in combat. Bartow recovered slowly from the war reaching only 400 residents by the 1880s and the first Polk County Courthouse was built in 1867 firmly establishing Bartow as the county seat. The 1880s and 1890s were a period of rapid growth moving the City’s population from 386 residents to 1,983. Bartow became a major hub of the phosphate industry and by the turn of the century, it was the most populous city south of Tampa on the Florida peninsula – larger than even Miami or West Palm Beach.  However, for most of the 20th century, Bartow’s growth was modest, especially in comparison to the rest of the county and state. This was largely due to the City being hemmed in by surrounding phosphate mining companies. By the 1910 Lakeland had surpassed it in population and Winter Haven surpassed it in 1950. Bartow is expecting to grow rapidly in the next decade thanks to the annexation of 18,000 acres of former phosphate mining land.

Bartow’s Main Street is by far its best urban attribute, lined with attractive early 20th century commercial buildings for several blocks. However, for a City that reached over 6K residents by WWII the surrounding residential and mixed/use streets are not particularly dense or urban filled with many parking lots, autocentric buildings, and missing sidewalks. The remaining population of what I consider to be Dwtn Barlow is just shy of 1,000 residents. While the Main Street remains strong, there hasn’t been a strong demand to live in the core of Bartow in the Post WWII era. This is reflected by the City’s Centers relative affordability where one can easily buy a 3-bed house a block from Main Street for 200K-300K. There are decent retail and cultural amenities Dwtn but a lack of walkable grocery stores or pharmacies and other standard retail amenities. The most important way to improve Dwtn Bartow is to build more housing, esp. apartments, which are very limited. This would drive better retail and cultural amenities and perhaps lead to more walkable schools in the City Center.

Click here to view my Bartow, FL Album on Flickr

URBAN STRENGTHS:

• Solid diversity metrics for Bartow (which I reviewed Citywide). Solid racial diversity with large Black & Hispanic populations and excellent economic diversity. This is also a pretty “”young”” town for Florida standards with a good number of families.
• Attractive historic architecture mixing lots of different residential styles form the late 19th century to the 1930s. Solid historic main street as well.
• For sale homes are pretty affordable but no smaller condos available. 2-beds sell btwn 100K-250, 3 & 4 beds sell btwn 130K-500K.
• Decent cultural amenities including a good number of restaurants, bars, and cafes. Also a couple breweries, an art gallery, several local museums and historic homes.
• Decent retail amenities Good number of clothing & home good/gift stores, a couple antique stores, several dessert joins/bakeries, 3 bookstores, a handful of banks, a couple gyms, a dwtn post office, several churches. No walkable pharmacies, public library or grocery stores.
• Excellent streetscaping along Main Street. Generally pretty good urban form along it as well. Urban form and streetscape drop off outside of Main street with more surface parking lots, autocentric buildings, and streets without sidewalks (even mixed-use streets).

URBAN WEAKNESSES:

• Overall Sidewalk and especially ADA infrastructure are spotty in central Bartow. Only Main Street is consistent.
• One can make the drive to Downtown Lakeland and Winter park in under 30 minutes but the bus ride is pretty awful (1-1.5 hrs.).
• Not great population density at around 4K.
• Very limited public transit. There is a nice bike route between Bartow and Lakeland but really no routes within the City of Bartow.
• Really only one park in Dwtn Bartow, Ft. Blount Park. The larger parks in Bartow are all located on the edge of town and not walkable.
• Apartments are very limited in Dwtn Bartow. Really only homes available for rental.
• Walkable schools dwtn are limited to a well rated public elementary school and smaller parochial school. One has to drive to middle and high school options.