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The Henry B. Plant Museum, once the Tampa Bay Hotel, embodies the city's rise from the frontier. An exhibit offers a glimpse of the landscape as seen by tourists 100 years ago.
By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 11, 2002
TAMPA -- Say "tourist" to a Floridian and images of -- well, everyone knows the many and varied cliches that resonate in that word.
Tourists a century ago were more homogeneous. Travel took longer and cost more so was usually restricted to the moneyed class. There were plenty of nouveau riche, but even they were expected to conform to a certain standard of Edith Wharton-type behavior.
Henry Bradley Plant, a self-made millionaire himself, cultivated these wealthy tourists, building a railroad that transported them to his grand hotel on the banks of the Hillsborough River, where they were cosseted for weeks and months at a time.
That life is long gone, but the hotel has endured and now houses the Henry B. Plant Museum, where visitors can glimpse the lavish -- sometimes cumbersome -- lifestyle of a tourist in fin de siecle America.
Looking at Tampa today, it's hard to imagine that less than 125 years ago, it was a frontier town with a population of about 700.
Plant was probably the person most responsible for changing that in about a decade, by running first a steamship line, then a railroad that turned the little village into a busy port and triggered an influx of industry and people. A good number were tourists, lured by mild winters.
His rivalry with Henry Flagler, who was developing the east coast of Florida, probably played some part in Plant's decision to build the extravagant pleasure palace he named, with uncharacteristic simplicity, the Tampa Bay Hotel. It opened in 1891, built at a cost of $3-million, a mix of architectural styles that added up to Gilded Age glamor.
The building ceased to be a hotel in the 1930s, and for several decades it languished in benign neglect.
But thanks to the wisdom of city fathers and historic preservationists, its exterior now sparkles. Most of it is used by the University of Tampa, on whose grounds it sits.
The museum occupies a good part of the first floor, where many original fixtures have survived or have been reproduced to create authentic interiors.
In addition to the permanent installations of furniture and decorative arts, the museum has opened a small exhibit called "Exotic Florida," paintings, photographs and artifacts that reproduce the Florida landscape as it was seen by a Victorian tourist.
Even in the late 1800s, after its burst of development, the area must have seemed a wilderness to big-city Northerners. To get to Tampa by train or ship, tourists had to navigate areas that looked like forests primeval. Not far beyond the manicured grounds of the hotel were estuaries with dense mangroves where wildlife thrived, including alligators.
Period artwork on display captures that sense of wonder, and sometimes apprehension, these sights inspired.
Also on view is a restoration in progress of the museum's collection of Venetian mirrors, collected by Mrs. Plant for the hotel during her travels to Europe. They are laid out in various stages of rehabilitation on tables and the floor in a front parlor, roped off but visible to passersby.
A stroll through the museum, where footfalls are padded by thick Oriental carpets and light is filtered, is a respite from the bustle just beyond its doors. It can be enjoyed during a lunch hour or for part of a weekend morning or afternoon, a brief but lovely glimpse of lost times.
"Exotic Florida" continues through Oct. 31 at the Henry B. Plant Museum, 401 W Kennedy Blvd on the University of Tampa campus. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun. A donation of $5 for adults and $2 for children 12 and younger is suggested. For information, call (813) 254-1891.