St. Petersburg Museum of History

The Mission of the St. Petersburg Museum of History is to collect, preserve and communicate the history and heritage of Florida with emphasis on St. Petersburg and the Pinellas Peninsula.

Pinellas County’s oldest museum was founded in 1920 as the St. Petersburg Memorial Historical Society. Through the determination and effort of Mary Wheeler Eaton and others, the Society began collecting artifacts, natural history specimens, archival documents, photographs, papers, and “boxes of unknown treasures that were just dropped on our doorstep during the night.”

In 1922, the Society became incorporated and the city of St. Petersburg provided the use of an old aquarium building (located on the same site as today’s Museum) for the public display of the Museum’s collections.