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This extravagant 125-year-old “Moorish Revival” building was once the most elegant hotel in Florida. Known as the Tampa Bay Hotel, railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant built it to lure widely traveled Victorians on to his trains bound for Tampa. It was the first hotel in Florida to have an elevator, and its rooms were the first in the state to be equipped with electric lights and telephones. Teddy Roosevelt and his Roughriders trained here during the Spanish-American War, and Babe Ruth hit his longest home run ever at a stadium once located on the hotel grounds. The hotel closed in 1930 and in 1933 it became part of what is now the University of Tampa. I photographed one of its many Moorish domes by layering it within the intricate latticework of the building’s ornate front porch.
Image Copyright © held by Phil Douglis, The Douglis Visual Workshops