In the spring of 1898, Tampa became the staging ground of a war — and the Tampa Bay Hotel became its social headquarters. The Henry B. Plant Museum’s interpretation of the Spanish-American War summer remains its most dramatic story.
Thousands of troops camped across the city waiting to embark for Cuba; officers including Theodore Roosevelt made the hotel’s verandas their salon, rocking between dances and dispatches while correspondents filed from the lawns. The museum’s exhibits pair the glamour — the grand balls of that fevered season — with the soldiers’ reality in the Florida heat.
The war lasted months; the legend of Tampa’s “splendid little summer” has lasted 125 years.
Stand on the veranda where it happened. The minarets remember everything.
