After WWII, St. Petersburg was ripe for development. Many public works projects helped lay the infrastructure for communities large and small throughout the Pinellas peninsula. Once seen purely as vacation land, Florida was becoming a place that people wanted to live year-round and that led to a demand for housing.

By 1952, US 19 (34th Street South) was extended all the way to the Skyway Bridge which made the undeveloped land in southwest St. Petersburg suddenly viable for development. As the owner of a dredging company charged with making much of the area around Boca Ciega Bay navigable, RC Huffman had a vision that later became Broadwater Estates, what we now know simply as Broadwater. This neighborhood between 38th and 48th Avenues South, west of 37th Street would see it's first home built in 1954. A few more popped up as the decade went on but most of the homes were still more than 10 years away.

Eckerd College started as Florida Presbyterian in 1958. A Campus was built on 267 acres just south of Broadwater along the Pinellas Bayway (54th Avenue South) thanks to land from the City of St. Petersburg. When construction was completed in 1963, there were still only a few homes in Broadwater but with more people coming to the southwest part of St. Petersburg, more and more people started to discover this ideal location that was minutes from the beaches, the downtown areas and had easy access to just about anywhere via US 19.

The 1970s saw a real boom in Broadwater as a majority of the nearly 600 homes were constructed during this time. Several different builders had models available, though most had one called the "Cruiser" designed to draw the boating enthusiasts. With so much waterfront property, most homes were designed to take advantage of the canals dredged decades earlier by RC Huffman.

The 80s and 90s saw the neighborhood fill out and some even began to tear down homes built during the neighborhoods earlier days to build new. Today, the history of Broadwater is still being written as the homeowners and Broadwater Civic Association have been working with the City of St. Petersburg and other professionals to devise the Broadwater Master Plan to help carry this neighborhood into the future while preserving the best things about one of St. Petersburg's Best Waterfront Communities.