Wood, who also designed the Old Hillsborough County Courthouse in 1892 in Tampa, Florida, as well as the Oglethorpe Hotel and the Mahoney-McGarvey House in Brunswick, Georgia.

The grounds of the hotel spanned 150 acres (0.61 km2) and included a golf course, bowling alley, racetrack, casino and an indoor heated swimming pool.

The Moorish Revival architectural theme was selected by Plant for its exotic European appeal to the widely traveled Victorians who would be his primary customers.

"[9] During the Tampa Bay Hotel's operating period from 1891 to 1930, it housed thousands of guests, including hundreds of celebrities and political figures.

Other notable visitors of the Tampa Bay Hotel included Sarah Bernhardt, Clara Barton, Stephen Crane, the Queen of the United Kingdom, the Prince of Wales, Winston Churchill, and Ignacy Paderewski.

[8] In 1919, Ruth hit his longest home run during a spring training game at Plant Field, adjacent to the hotel.

The Tampa Bay Hotel officially closed its doors in 1930, due to the Great Depression severely curtailing tourism.

On August 2, 1933, the Tampa Bay Junior College was granted permission to move into the hotel, using the rooms that were once suites as classrooms, laboratories, and administration offices, and due to the large amount of space afforded by the hotel, the scope of the junior college expanded, causing it to become the University of Tampa.

Plant Museum participates in Tampa's Fourth Friday celebration promoting cultural venues by offering free entertainment on the Veranda from 5 pm-7 pm, January through October.

[12] Picnic in the Park is a program where adults and families can relax in the garden or try their hand at Victorian games, such as horseshoes, badminton, and croquet.

[13] The Great Gatsby Party is hosted annually in the Fletcher Lounge as a 1920's speakeasy featuring live period music, an open bar, food, games of chance, and vintage 1929 Bentley photo-ops.

Other notable exhibits included Imperial Designs: From the Habsburg’s Herend to the Romanov’s Fabergé and Red Cross Nursing and the War of 1898.

The fountain's title is Transportation, and reflects Mr. Plant's system of trains and ships with carved representations of each on the sculpture.

[17] The fountain was carved from solid stone by George Grey Barnard and is the oldest public art in the city of Tampa.

These are model 1819 iron 24-pounder seacoast guns and were originally part of a three-gun Confederate battery guarding Tampa Bay during the Civil War.

Recently, Tampa's Rough Riders civic group remounted the Fort Brooke cannons on replica gun carriages in a new stone revetment in Plant Park.

For many years the lost third Fort Brooke cannon was a lawn decoration at 901 Bayshore Boulevard but was donated to a World War II scrap metal drive on October 9, 1942.

Facing Kennedy Boulevard in Plant Park is another historic weapon, a turn-of-the-century coast defense gun.

The original Fort Dade gun described on the base was placed in Plant Park in November 1927 but was donated to a steel scrap drive during World War II.

Following the war, an eight-inch (203 mm) gun of similar vintage (both were M1888 weapons) was obtained from Fort Morgan, Alabama and installed on the 1927 memorial's vacant plinth.

[18] The statues were sculpted by famed canine sculptor Eglantine Lemaître (French, 1852–1920) and were cast in France by Maurice Denonvilliers in 1890.

[18] Originally, they faced south rather than north and their rapt attention was focused on a small bronze squirrel placed on a low-hanging oak limb.

The Friends of Plant Park (FoPP) is a Florida non-profit corporation with the mission to (a) assist with the restoration, preservation and maintenance of The Henry B.