Henry B. Plant Museum

Railroad giant Henry Bradley Plant (10/27/1819 to 6/23/1899) was born in in Branford, Conn. His grandmother, offered him an education at Yale College, hoping he would become a clergyman. Henry had different ideas, he got a job as captain's boy and deck hand on a steamboat. He then became involved in railroads and because of his wife's health, they traveled south. After the Civil War, southern railroads were in ruins. Plant, convinced of the south's economic revival, bought Atlantic and Gulf Railroad. He restored lines to help orange growers to get their crops north faster. Tampa became his home port for a new line of steamships to Havanna, and spent $2,500,000 on a Moorish palace named the Tampa Bay Hotel, for Plant's winter guests, which is now the University of Tampa and houses the Henry Plant Museum on six acres. He also developed 150 acres in a pleasure park, with golf course, stables, racetrack and hunting grounds. Most of that is taken up by the school today, except 4.5 acres that is still parkland. It is on the banks of the Hillsborough River and some estimate it would cost $40 million in today's money. Morton Freeman Plant, his son gave many gifts to hospitals. His former 1905 mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City is now the home of Cartier.