This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(February 2012) |
Tampa Bay Hotel | |
Location | 401 W. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, Florida |
---|---|
Coordinates | 27°56′43.7″N82°27′50.45″W / 27.945472°N 82.4640139°W |
Area | 4.5 acres (1.8 ha) |
Built | 1888–1891 [1] |
Architect | John A. Wood [2] |
Architectural style | Moorish Revival [1] |
NRHP reference No. | 72000322 [2] |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | December 5, 1972 |
Designated NHL | May 11, 1976 [3] |
The Henry B. Plant Museum (Plant Museum) is located in the south wing of Plant Hall on the University of Tampa's campus. It is located at 401 West Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa, Florida. Plant Hall was originally built by Henry B. Plant as the Tampa Bay Hotel; a 511-room resort-style hotel that opened on February 5, 1891, near the terminus of the Plant System rail line, also forged and owned by Plant. The Plant Museum's exhibits focus on historical Gilded Age tourism in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, the elite lifestyle of the hotel's guests, and the Tampa Bay Hotel's use during the Spanish–American War. As such, the Plant Museum is set up in the Historic House Museum style. Exhibits display artifacts in a manner that reflects the original placement and usage within the related historic building.
The Tampa Bay Hotel was designed by architect J.A. Wood, who also designed the Old Hillsborough County Courthouse in 1892 in Tampa, Florida, as well as the Oglethorpe Hotel and the Mahoney-McGarvey House in Brunswick, Georgia.
The Plant Museum is listed as an Accredited Museum and a Core Documents Verified Museum by the American Alliance of Museums. [4]
On April 18, 2012, the American Institute of Architects' Florida Chapter placed the University of Tampa's Plant Hall on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places. [5]
The Henry B. Plant Museum through the University of Tampa's Plant Hall was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as a U.S. National Historic Landmark, designated as such on December 5, 1972, under the name of the Tampa Bay Hotel.
The Tampa Bay Hotel was built by railroad magnate Henry B. Plant between 1888 and 1891. The construction cost was over $3 million. [6] The Tampa Bay Hotel was considered the premier hotel of the eight that Plant built to anchor his rail line. The hotel covers 6 acres (24,000 m2) and is a quarter-mile long. The Tampa Bay Hotel was equipped with the first elevator ever installed in Florida, and the elevator is still functional today, making it one of the oldest continually operational elevators in the nation. [7] The 511 rooms and suites were the first in Florida to have electric lighting and telephones. Most rooms also included private bathrooms, complete with a full-size tub. Room Pricing ranged from $5.00 to $15.00 a night at a time when the average hotel in Tampa charged $1.25 to $2.00. The poured-concrete, steel-reinforced structure of the building was advertised as fireproof.
The grounds of the hotel spanned 150 acres (0.61 km2) and included a golf course, bowling alley, racetrack, casino and an indoor heated swimming pool. In all, 21 buildings could be found on the hotel's grounds. The Moorish Revival architectural theme was selected by Plant for its exotic European appeal to the widely traveled Victorians who would be his primary customers. The hotel has six minarets, four cupolas, and three domes spanning five stories all trimmed in ornate Victorian Gingerbread. [8] In the early 1990s, all were restored to their original stainless steel state.
From 1889 to 1891, Plant scoured Europe collecting lavish objects to decorate the hotel in grandeur. Art arrived "by the trainload". Despite the immense size of the hotel, the purchases Plant made overflowed the space and the surplus had to be disposed of at auction. Much of the original art and furnishings have been removed, but the wing in Plant Hall conserved as the Henry B. Plant Museum contains "a bewildering assortment of rococo bronzes, furniture, clocks, tapestries, paintings, and vases, one vase being a gift from the Emperor of Japan." [9]
During the Tampa Bay Hotel's operating period from 1891 to 1930, it housed thousands of guests, including hundreds of celebrities and political figures. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish–American War, Plant convinced the United States military to use his hotel as a base of operations. Generals and high-ranking officers stayed in the hotel to plan invasion strategies, while enlisted men encamped on the hotel's acreage. Colonel Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were also stationed at the hotel during this time. Roosevelt retained a suite and during the day led his men in battle exercises on the grounds. Other notable visitors of the Tampa Bay Hotel included Sarah Bernhardt, Clara Barton, Stephen Crane, the Queen of the United Kingdom, the Prince of Wales, Winston Churchill, and Ignacy Paderewski. Babe Ruth was also a guest of the hotel during its latter days and signed his first baseball contract in the Grand Dining Room. [8] In 1919, Ruth hit his longest home run during a spring training game at Plant Field, adjacent to the hotel.
The Tampa Bay Hotel officially closed its doors in 1930, due to the Great Depression severely curtailing tourism. The hotel remained empty and unused for three years. On August 2, 1933, the Tampa Bay Junior College was granted permission to move into the hotel, using the rooms that were once suites as classrooms, laboratories, and administration offices, and due to the large amount of space afforded by the hotel, the scope of the junior college expanded, causing it to become the University of Tampa. [8] The Tampa Municipal Museum was established by the city to preserve the hotel in its original form and co-exist with the newly established University. In 1941, the city of Tampa signed a 99-year lease with the University of Tampa for $1.00 a year. The lease excluded the southeast wing of the building to allow for the housing of the museum. In 1974, the Tampa Municipal Museum was renamed the Henry B. Plant Museum.
Today, in addition to serving as offices, laboratories, and classrooms for the University of Tampa, the south wing of Plant Hall is dedicated to preserving the opulence of the historic Tampa Bay Hotel. Various rooms in the wing display authentic artifacts from the old hotel, many of which were purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Plant themselves on various European shopping trips. These displays use the Historic House Museum method and depict suites, dining, war life, Victorian activities, and more with exhibits displaying artifacts laid out awaiting their Victorian user's return. The Plant Museum offers the option to book guided tours with a docent, as well as self-guided audio tours and a video entitled The Tampa Bay Hotel: Florida's First Magic Kingdom, all to showcase a life of leisure in historic Florida.
Music in the Museum is a live, classical music performance of violin, harp, or guitar that takes place on the third Thursday of every month at 11 am to memorialize the live music that was so much a part of the Tampa Bay Hotel. [10]
Fourth Friday The Henry B. Plant Museum participates in Tampa's Fourth Friday celebration promoting cultural venues by offering free entertainment on the Veranda from 5 pm-7 pm, January through October. [11]
Sunday Tour Guided tours are offered by docents followed by the Upstairs/Downstairs theater performance - September - May (excluding December).
Upstairs/Downstairs at the Tampa Bay Hotel Occurs every Sunday at 2 pm, September through May. Single-character performances transport visitors back in time by discussing their experiences in the hotel. Characters are based either wholly or in part on actual guests or staff of the hotel. [12]
Picnic in the Park is a program where adults and families can relax in the garden or try their hand at Victorian games, such as horseshoes, badminton, and croquet. Character actors are present in traditional Victorian attire and there is live entertainment on the Center Stage.
Victorian Christmas Stroll Visitors can witness Victorian Christmas via a walk through the museum and gardens. [13]
The Great Gatsby Party is hosted annually in the Fletcher Lounge as a 1920's speakeasy featuring live period music, an open bar, food, games of chance, and vintage 1929 Bentley photo-ops.
An Eerie Evening at the Tampa Bay Hotel is held in October. Visitors tour the museum by moonlight and hear spooky stories from a bygone era. [14]
The Plant Museum occasionally holds antique evaluations, similar to those done on Antiques Roadshow.
The museum also hosts special exhibitions outside of its permanent collection. One such exhibit was The Sportin' Life from March 21, 2020 - February 21, 2021. Popular sporting paraphernalia from the Gilded Age was displayed, including Babe Ruth signed baseballs, assorted swimming suits, golf equipment, and racing equipment. Other notable exhibits included Imperial Designs: From the Habsburg’s Herend to the Romanov’s Fabergé and Red Cross Nursing and the War of 1898. [15] In 2015, the Plant Museum hosted Passionate Design: The American Arts & Crafts Movement, a special exhibition of material from the collection of the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, now complete as of 2020 in St. Petersburg, Florida. [16]
The hotel once featured many attractions, most located in what is now known as Plant Park. Today, as part of both the University of Tampa's campus and the museum's grounds, several of these attractions can still be seen. At the entrance to the park is the "Henry Bradley Plant Memorial Fountain," commissioned by Margaret Plant in 1899 after her husband's death. The fountain's title is Transportation, and reflects Mr. Plant's system of trains and ships with carved representations of each on the sculpture. The eagle holding the strongbox is the logo of The Southern Express Company, Plant's first company. [17] The fountain was carved from solid stone by George Grey Barnard and is the oldest public art in the city of Tampa. Conservation of this fountain was completed in 1995.
Facing the Hillsborough River near the University of Tampa's library are two historic cannons from Fort Brooke, the early 19th-century military post (established 1824) around which Tampa was developed. These are model 1819 iron 24-pounder seacoast guns and were originally part of a three-gun Confederate battery guarding Tampa Bay during the Civil War. On May 6, 1864, a Union naval raiding party captured Fort Brooke and, before withdrawing the next day, disabled the three heavy cannons by blowing one trunnion off of each (trunnions are the side projections on which cannons pivot to elevate or depress). This damage is still evident on the two Plant Park guns today.
In the 1890s, Henry Plant moved two of the long-abandoned cannons from the site of Fort Brooke to the grounds of Tampa Bay Hotel, placing them in a small earthwork revetment as a curiosity for the hotel's guests. Later the guns were placed on plinths made of coquina blocks. Recently, Tampa's Rough Riders civic group remounted the Fort Brooke cannons on replica gun carriages in a new stone revetment in Plant Park. For many years the lost third Fort Brooke cannon was a lawn decoration at 901 Bayshore Boulevard but was donated to a World War II scrap metal drive on October 9, 1942.
Facing Kennedy Boulevard in Plant Park is another historic weapon, a turn-of-the-century coast defense gun. This gun memorializes the important part Tampa played in the 1898 Spanish–American War and symbolically points south toward Cuba. The inscription on the monument base describes it as an eight-inch (203 mm) gun on a "disappearing carriage" taken from Fort Dade, an old coastal defense fort located on Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay. The true story is a bit more complicated.
The original Fort Dade gun described on the base was placed in Plant Park in November 1927 but was donated to a steel scrap drive during World War II. Following the war, an eight-inch (203 mm) gun of similar vintage (both were M1888 weapons) was obtained from Fort Morgan, Alabama and installed on the 1927 memorial's vacant plinth. The new gun is mounted on the top portion of a 1918 railway gun carriage dating from World War I rather than the "disappearing carriage" of the original Fort Dade weapon.
Plant Park once housed a small zoo located along Biology Creek, a stream that runs through part of the park. The creek is fed from an underground spring beneath the hotel and empties a few hundred yards away into the Hillsborough River. While in operation, the zoo contained a bear, an alligator, plus many smaller animals. The zoo was famous for its hundreds of squirrels and small lizards, which are still on campus. The bear and alligator were eventually moved upriver and became the core attractions for what became Lowry Park Zoo. The creek's name derives from a later period in its history when students from the university used its water to conduct various biology experiments.
A statue called Au Coup de Fusil, meaning The Shot (as in gunshot or rifle shot), can be found outside the hotel. These two bronze hounds represent two-pointers being alerted by the sound of a gunshot. [18] The statues were sculpted by famed canine sculptor Eglantine Lemaître (French, 1852–1920) and were cast in France by Maurice Denonvilliers in 1890. [18] Originally, they faced south rather than north and their rapt attention was focused on a small bronze squirrel placed on a low-hanging oak limb. However, this was a misinterpretation of the piece, as evidenced by the hounds' attention being diverted in different directions. The squirrel was eventually stolen, and the dogs were moved to their current location. Supposedly, the two dogs represent Mr. Plant's personal favorite hunting dogs and the hotel itself had kennels stocked with hunting dogs for guests to use on hunting expeditions.
The Friends of Plant Park (FoPP) is a Florida non-profit corporation with the mission to (a) assist with the restoration, preservation and maintenance of The Henry B. Plant Park, as a botanical garden open to the general public, (b) research and publicize the Victorian history of The Henry B. Plant Park, and (c) educate the public and cultivate community interest in and support for the foregoing activities. This group was formed in 1993.
Since 1997 the FoPP has hosted the annual GreenFest activities in Henry B. Plant Park to raise money. To date those funds, along with contributions from individuals, organizations, the City of Tampa, and Hillsborough County, have allowed for the restoration of and new exhibit of the cannons, the Victorian star-shaped garden bed, and a replica of the 112-foot flagpole with a 12X18-foot replica of the 45-star American flag (1891). The original flagpole was probably a ship's mast. A Florida state flag and a University of Tampa flag fly from the replica's crossbars. [19]
Hillsborough County is a county located in the west-central portion of the U.S. state of Florida. In the 2020 census, the population was 1,459,762, making it the fourth-most populous county in Florida and the most populous county outside the Miami metropolitan area. A 2021 estimate has the population of Hillsborough County at 1,512,070 people with a yearly growth rate of 1.34%, which itself is greater than the populations of 12 states according to their 2019 population estimates. Its county seat and largest city is Tampa. Hillsborough County is part of the Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Tampa is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the county seat of Hillsborough County. With an estimated population of 403,364 in 2023, Tampa is the 49th-most populous city in the country and the third-most populous city in Florida after Jacksonville and Miami.
Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and shallow estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west-central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsborough Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The largest freshwater inflow into the bay is the Hillsborough River, which flows into Hillsborough Bay in downtown Tampa. Many other smaller rivers and streams also flow into Tampa Bay, resulting in a large watershed area.
The Hillsborough River is a river located in the state of Florida in the United States. It arises in the Green Swamp near the juncture of Hillsborough, Pasco and Polk counties, and flows 60 miles (97 km) through Pasco and Hillsborough Counties to an outlet in the city of Tampa on Hillsborough Bay. It includes 4 nature trails extending for over 7 miles (11 km), making it popular among hikers. The name Hillsborough River first appeared on a British map in 1769. At the time, the Earl of Hillsborough was the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, and thus controlled the pensions of the surveyors working in the American colonies, which included East Florida.
The Battle of Tampa, also known as the "Yankee Outrage at Tampa", was a minor engagement of the American Civil War fought June 30 – July 1, 1862, between the United States Navy and a Confederate artillery company charged with "protecting" the village of Tampa, Florida. Although small, Tampa's port was a key hub of trade for Central Florida, and several blockade runners from Tampa regularly slipped past the Union naval blockade that extended down the Atlantic coast around to Florida's west coast.
The University of Tampa (UT) is a private university in Tampa, Florida. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. UT offers more than 200 programs of study, including 19 master's degrees and a broad variety of majors, minors, pre-professional programs and certificates.
Henry Bradley Plant, was a businessman, entrepreneur, and investor involved with many transportation interests and projects, mostly railroads, in the southeastern United States. He was founder of the Plant System of railroads and steamboats.
The TECO Line Streetcar is a heritage streetcar transit line in Tampa, Florida, run by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transportation Authority (HART), owned by the city of Tampa, and managed by Tampa Historic Streetcar, Inc. It connects Downtown and Channelside to the historic Ybor City district. There is also an "In-Town" trolley-replica bus system that connects Downtown, Channelside, and Harbour Island.
Fort Brooke was a historical military post established at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in present-day Tampa, Florida in 1824. Its original purpose was to serve as a check on and trading post for the native Seminoles who had been confined to an interior reservation by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), and it served as a military headquarters and port during the Second Seminole War (1835–1842). The village of Tampa developed just north of the fort during this period, and the area was the site of a minor raid and skirmish during the American Civil War. The obsolete outpost was sparsely garrisoned after the war, and it was decommissioned in 1883 just before Tampa began a period of rapid growth, opening the land for development.
Ballast Point is a neighborhood located in the city of Tampa, county of Hillsborough, and the U.S. state of Florida. It is bordered by Hillsborough Bay, a section of the larger Tampa Bay. The ZIP code serving the area is 33611. The boundaries are Gandy Blvd. to the north, MacDill Air Force Base to the south, Hillsborough Bay to the east and S. MacDill Ave. to the west. Also included are the homes and businesses on the west side of the street of S. MacDill Ave., Gadsden Park on S. MacDill Ave. and the adjacent ELAPP Property which is part of the South Tampa Greenway.
The modern history of Tampa, Florida, can be traced to the founding of Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in today's downtown in 1824, soon after the United States had taken possession of Florida from Spain. The outpost brought a small population of civilians to the area, and the town of Tampa was first incorporated in 1855.
Timeline of Pinellas County, Florida history.
Downtown Tampa is the central business district of Tampa, Florida, United States, and the chief financial district of the Tampa Bay Area.
The Battle of Fort Brooke was a minor engagement fought October 16–18, 1863 in and around Tampa, Florida during the American Civil War. The most important outcome of the action was the destruction of two Confederate blockade runners which had been hidden upstream on the Hillsborough River.
The Tampa Convention Center is a mid-sized convention center located in downtown Tampa, Florida at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. It has both waterfront views of Tampa Bay and views of the city's skyline. Harbour Island is across the eponymous bridge on the other side of the Garrison Channel. The center is connected to the neighboring Channelside District and Ybor City via the TECO Line Streetcar, which has a station across the street. The center opened in 1990 and encompasses 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) in total. It has a 200,000 square feet (19,000 m2) exhibit hall, a ballroom capable of accommodating over 2,000 guests, and 36 meeting rooms that can be adjusted to various sizes. The facility hosts over 100 events per year.
The cityscape of Tampa includes historic and architecturally noteworthy structures in its downtown and residential areas. The Seminole Heights and Hyde Park neighborhoods are two of the largest historic preservation districts in Tampa.
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the U.S. state of Florida.
Tampa Bay History Center is a history museum in Tampa, Florida, United States. It is a Smithsonian Affiliate and has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums since 2015. Exhibits include coverage of the Tampa Bay area's first native inhabitants, Spanish conquistadors, and historical figures who shaped the area's history, as well as a reproduction of a 1920s cigar store. The museum is on the waterfront at 801 Water Street in Tampa's Channelside District. It opened on January 17, 2009. The History Center building is 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2) with 25,000 square feet (2,300 m2) of exhibit space.
John A. Wood, was an American architect. His work in upstate New York included projects in Poughkeepsie and Kingston, New York as well as four armories, in Kingston, Newburgh, Bethel, and Watertown. His work in Tampa, Florida includes the Tampa Bay Hotel and Old Hillsborough County Courthouse. His hotel work included the design of the Piney Woods Hotel, Oglethorpe Hotel, Mizzen Top Hotel, and Grand Hotel.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Tampa in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States.