It looks like a sultan’s palace wandered into Florida — because that’s almost what Henry B. Plant intended. Plant Hall, the former Tampa Bay Hotel (1891), is the city’s defining landmark: a Moorish Revival fantasy of silver minarets, cupolas and verandas built as a railroad magnate’s luxury resort on the Hillsborough River.
Today the National Historic Landmark houses the University of Tampa’s classrooms and the Henry B. Plant Museum, whose period rooms preserve the Gilded Age splendor — and whose verandas hosted Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in 1898.
From the Riverwalk, its skyline of onion domes and crescent moons is Tampa’s most beloved silhouette, glowing at sunset.
Every city gets one fairytale building. Tampa’s has minarets — and a museum inside.
