Sponge Warehouse

Sponge Warehouse. Built: 1930 - Moved: 2004. , A Warehouse Near the Gulf , Around 1930 Drosos Alahuzos opened a wholesale sponge business in this wood frame warehouse, part of his family's Philadelphia based business. After his death in 1955, another Philadelphia sponge dealer, George Kousaleos with the Gulf of Mexico Sponge Company, purchased the warehouse. He conducted business from there until the mid 1970s. Both the Alahuzos and Kousaleos families come to America from Kalymnos, known as "sponge divers' island," one of a chain of Greek islands in the Mediterranean Sea. , Building a Business , This simple frame warehouse with a separate cement block sponge washroom in the rear, has the original signs on the building noting the location of the company's offices in Pennsylvania and Greece. Check out its large side doors used for loading and unloading sponges. , An Absorbing Industry , Divers brought natural sponges collected from the coastal waters off Tarpon Springs to this warehouse to prepare them for market. Workers washed, dried, clipped, sorted and packaged the sponges into bales. These single cell animals come in a variety of shapes, colors and sizes and are highly absorbent. Customers, including U.S. Steel and Alcoa, purchased sponges for cleaning, cosmetics, ceramics and medical purposes. After World War II, less expensive synthetic sponges, combined with periodic blights that wiped out much of the Gulf's sponges, led to a gradual decline in the local sponge industry. , The Sponge Capital , John Cheyney, a Philadelphia native, formed the Anclote and Rock Island Sponge Company in 1891. He purchased land on Bailey's Bluff where hookers brought their sponge harvests to process and sell. Always the entrepreneur, in 1896 Cheyney hired John Cocoris, a Greek Immigrant and sponge buyer to improve productivity in his company., In 1905 Cocoris brought the first sailing and motor sponge diving boats to Tarpon Springs while actively recruiting nearly 500 sponge divers from Greece. Along with the divers came their families and friends creating Tarpon's unique community with its Greek culture, services and amenities. Soon Tarpon Springs became known as "The Sponge Capital of the World." , Tidbits from Time , History Detectives , Countless spelling variations of Alahuzos baffled researchers tracing the history of this sponge warehouse. Errors in public records and the Americanization of names made it essential that researchers double check all the facts and clues. The sleuths used the spelling as it appears on the gravestone of Drosos Alahuzos in Tarpon Springs.