Twilight at the Roser Park Ghost House

Watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil on wood panel, 18" x 18"

Created for St Pete @ Dusk
at GreenBench Brewing, March 2025.
Curated by Chad Mize

For this show, we were asked to create a piece depicting St. Petersburg at dusk. As a long-time resident and lifetime lover of Roser Park, it was only natural that I would choose something from this area as inspiration. Decidedly unlike any other area topographically in St. Pete, Roser Park is a historic district built around Booker Creek south of downtown. Due to the aforementioned topography, the area is filled with homes built on steep embankments with long staircases and terraced retaining walls, eschewing the general flatness the area is generally known for. The streets are lined with very old trees, giving the neighborhood the feeling of a storybook secret garden (which should go far to explain why I have always loved it so).

Originally built in the early 1900s with a variety of stately Craftsman-era homes, Roser Park experienced a steep decline in the mid 1900s as the local population moved further west in the city and was largely abandoned to ruin. Much of the iconic architecture was lost to road works, hospital expansion from Bayfront/All Children’s, and general urban decay, leaving many homes razed and lots empty of their former beauty. In particular, there is a stretch of land on Roser Park Drive west of the 8th Street connector on which most of the properties were demolished, leaving the terraces and stairs leading to nowhere – and I have affectionately taken to calling them, the Roser Park Ghost Houses. Many times, I have wandered the area, imagining how they may have been if road expansion not so carelessly discarded them.

I have done a decent amount of research on the area but have not found any photographic record of how these particular homes appeared. So, in this piece, I imagine what may have been, based on other architecture in the area. There she sits, the ghost of a house long forgotten, atop the hill in the setting sun.

The glowing orbs and green mist are a nod to the local urban legend of the Mini Lights, said to haunt that end of the street after dark.