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Henry B. Plant Museum
The Henry B. Plant Museum is set
in the south wing of Plant Hall, which was the Tampa Bay Hotel, on
the University of Tampa's campus at Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa,
Florida; which highlights the Victorian lifestyle of the turn of the
20th century afforded the hotel's guests. Focusing on the gilded age
and the start of the state's and Tampa's growing tourist business,
this museum is open almost every day except Mondays and holidays.
There is a wonderful annual Victorian Christmas stroll held there,
and the whole building, formerly the Tampa Bay Hotel, is a National
Historic Landmark that was designated such in 1972. The hotel
was constructed by railroad baron Henry B. Plant, which was one of
eight that were built by Plant to anchor his railroad line, and
while this is the best, it did cost $2.5 million. The hotel building
sprawls across 6 acres and is a quarter mile long. It contained the
first elevator in the state and is still being used today, which
means it is the oldest continuously operating elevator in the
country. There are 511 rooms and suites, which themselves contain
anywhere from 3 to 7 rooms; and the first hotel in the state to have
telephones and electricity. The majority of the rooms had private
bathrooms, with a full sized tub included. The price for a room was
anywhere from $5 a night to $15 a night, when the average hotel in
the state only charges $1.25 to $2.00 a night. It was constructed of
concrete steel reinforced and advertised as being fireproof. The
landscape sprawls across 150 acres with an indoor heated pool, golf
course, racetrack, casino and bowling alley. Altogether, there are
21 separate buildings with a Moorish Revival style of architecture,
because Plant figured that the exotic look would be more familiar
with the traveling Victorians that would be his main customers. It
has 6 minarets, three domes and four cupolas, and all of them were
renovated to their stainless steel condition. While the hotel was in
operation, from 1891 to 1930, there were many thousands that came,
with many hundreds of them being celebrities; and when the
Spanish-American War erupted, Henry offered the US military the use
of his hotel for their base of operations. Thereafter, high ranking
officers and generals would stay in the rooms, planning invasions,
with the enlisted men camping on the grounds. Colonel Teddy
Roosevelt and his Rough Riders came to the hotel also during this
era of war. Teddy had a suite and in the daytime hours would train
his troops in the battle exercises right there on the property. Some
of the famous people that came here included; the Prince of Wales,
Clara Barton, Sarah Bernhardt, the Queen of England and Stephen
Crane. This hotel is where Babe Ruth stayed and signed his first
baseball contract, right in the Grand Dining Room, and some say that
he hit his longest home run from the Tampa Fairgrounds Stadium that
was sitting on the grounds. There were many wonderful amenities and
attractions, which are now located in Plant Park, and presently, it
is part of the University of Tampa and the museum's ground, with
many quite visible. Going into the park, you will pass by the Henry
Bradley Plant Memorial Fountain that was commissioned by Margaret
Plant in 1899, just after Henry had passed on. The fountain is
called Transportation, and showcases the system of ships and
railroads used in Henry's business and now represented by carved
reliefs on the sculpture. The fountain itself was carved from a
single boulder by George G. Barnard and is now the oldest piece of
public sculpture in the city. The hotel closed in 1930, and
stayed empty for the next three years, and in late 1933, the Tampa
Bay Junior College moved into the hotel, using the former suites as
classrooms and offices. Since the hotel was so huge, the small
college could be enlarged, eventually becoming the University of
Tampa, and the Tampa Municipal Museum was started by the city to
preserve the hotel in its original state and to co-exist with the
new university. In 1941, the city signed a 99 year lease with the
university for $1.00 a year, which did exclude the southeast wing to
hold the museum. Then in 1974, it was renamed the Henry B. Plant
Museum.
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