The trains and steamboats of the Henry Bradley (1819-1899) factory will forever change the face of Tampa, transforming it from sleepiness and swampland to modernity in record time. Towards the end of the second half of the 19th century, new businesses and new markets flourished. The fishing industry has diversified and expanded its scope. The phosphate mines increased their production and shipped it far beyond its borders. Transformed into two major cigar manufacturing centers, Ybor City and West Tampa took root in this system of trains and ships to place their products in the domestic and global market.

In this expansive process, the Tampa Bay Hotel was something of a crowning achievement. In 1888 Plant purchased land near the Hillsborough River to build a large hotel and begin to develop the tourist industry in the area, then virtually connected to the whole Union. Completed three years later, in 1891, the new building—spectacularly modern for its time—was constructed at a cost of more than $2 million and $500,000 in carefully selected furniture and artwork brought from Europe. A huge five-story facility with over 500 rooms with private bathrooms, electricity and telephones. A great leap forward in the American hotel industry at the time, on a par with — and sometimes beyond — New York and other major cities. And as if to emphasize it loud and clear, he owned Florida’s first elevator.

Inspired by the Alhambra palace in Granada, but absolutely eclectic, the walls of the hotel were over a foot thick. It was built of red brick, like the cigar factories located not far from this area bordering the river. At the time, Plant was changing much of the railway system from narrow gauge to standard gauge, so the steel used in its construction came from scrap rails.

The hotel was overflowing with amenities and facilities. There was a large hall, a restaurant, a music room, a barber shop, a beauty salon, a writing and reading room, and a telegraph office. Guests can enjoy other modern facilities such as a golf course, tennis courts, a billiard room, a casino with a capacity of about 2,000 people, a racecourse and even hunting grounds….

But in 1898 his fate would change for a short time. After the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana Bay on February 15 of that year, and the declaration of war on Spain by Congress and President McKinley on April 28, Tampa would go down in history as the point of embarkation for American troops in Cuba precisely because of its geographical location, its deep-water port, its connection with the national railways and Plant’s lobbying with the structures of power.

The army sets up seven camps in the region and transforms the Tampa Bay Hotel into a place of residence for the officers who, from their armchair, design the strategy to be followed against the new enemies. That of 1998 was that splendid little war of only ten weeks by Secretary of State John Hay which, in fact, resulted in the debacle of the Spanish Navy in the bay of Santiago de Cuba, led by Admiral Pascual Cervera, in reality an assisted suicide by the manifest inferiority of warships and the technique of decadent colonial power.

Generals Joe Wheeler, John B. Gordon, Fitzhugh Lee and Nelson A. Miles were among the protagonists of this process of war against Spain from the Tampa Bay Hotel. There was also a colonel named Leonard Wood (1860-1927), future military governor of Cuba and governor general of the Philippines. This military mobilization had the distinction of being the first foreign operation carried out by the army since the Mexican-American War of 1847, based on Manifest Destiny and which ended on February 2, 1848, with the signing of the Guadalupe-Hidalgo Treaty: Mexico ceded half of its territory to the United States in exchange for 15 million dollars.

Among other historical figures who traveled through and around Tampa at the time was a young officer named Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt (1858-1919), who in late May 1989 was camping near the hotel with his Rough Riders while his wife stayed in her rooms.

After landing in Santiago de Cuba, Roosevelt and his comrades in arms – athletes, cowboys and miners – intervened in the battle of Loma de San Juan on July 1, 1898, one of the “most notorious” myths of American history for the accents of heroism against the Spanish troops, made possible in large part by the work of Roosevelt himself as a writer and by later recreations of these events, filmed in tessitura with the stories of the Wild West versus the natives. His cavalry troops had to fight on foot as they had left their horses at the barracks in Tampa due to logistical problems.

In the spring of 1898, military bands played in the hotel at night. It is said that gentlemen and ladies danced both in the rotunda and in the ballroom. But among those watching from the mahogany-railed balconies were Cuban girls who, according to oral tradition, swore never to dance again “until Havana is free.”

When Plant died, the hotel operated with ups and downs until 1932, when it was engulfed by the Great Depression. At its best, it received visitors and jet set personalities, including baseball player Babe Ruth (1895-1948), Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) and French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844- 1923). As well as politicians like William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), three times Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, and President Grover Cleveland, the only one to have served two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897) in the national history of the United States.

In August 1933, Tampa Junior College became the University of Tampa, and since then the hotel built by the former contractor has been its headquarters. Today it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a national monument.

Alfredo Prieto