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Images of America Tampa Union Station
Images of America Tampa Union Station By Jackson Mcquigg
127 PAGES SOFTCOVER
Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgments
1.Decline:
Tampa Union Station's Years of Despair
2.Plant's Empire:
Henry B. Plant, the Plant System, and the Tampa Bay Hotel
3. Heyday:
Tampa Union Station's Golden Age
4.After the War:
Tampa Union Station in an Era of Change
5.Rebirth:
A Tampa Landmark Gets a Second Chance
6.Extra Section:
Tampa Bay Area Railroad Scenes
Introduction
"The Tampa union station will be opened to the public at 6 o' clock tomorrow morning. Everything is being placed in readiness today, under the direction of Stationmaster Harry Love." -The Tampa Times, May 14, 1912
1912. William Howard Taft was president of the United States. The world's first commercial airline flight-made by pilot Tony Jannus's St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line-was still two years away. Model Ts and streetcars roamed Tampa's avenues and boulevards, forced to share the road with wagons and carriages, holdovers from a previous time. The 320-room Hillsboro Hotel would open downtown at Florida and Twiggs Streets that year, but it was the dedication of another place of lodging 21 years earlier-the railroad-owned Tampa Bay Hotel-which had first marked the city's coming of age.
Completed in 1891 at a cost of $3 million, the Tampa Bay Hotel was the capstone of a building spree initiated by financier and Southern Express Company owner Henry B. Plant the decade before. On January 22, 1884, the Plant-controlled South Florida Railroad completed its planned line into Tampa. Seventy-five miles of right-of-way, roadbed, and track-linking Tampa to an existing Plant System railroad line at Kissimmee-were fashioned through acres of rough-hewn woodland and palmetto scrub. A state charter for the South Florida Railroad-purchased by Plant at a fire sale price after its previous owner could not secure the financing to build the line-was most generous; it granted Plant a whopping 13,840 acres of real estate for each of the 75 miles of line.
Tampa would be incorporated one year after the arrival of the Plant System. Seven years later, Plant hoped that the lavish 511-room hotel would transform Tampa from a mere town into a destination, specifically a destination for the wealthy. And there was reason to think that such an undertaking would be successful. Across the state, railroad baron Henry Flagler was creating his own string of railroad hotels, a creation which began with the opening of the Flagler-owned Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine in May 1887; the Tampa Bay Hotel was Plant's answer to the doings of his rival.
Plant's hotel was destined to become a business failure, though the beautiful minaret-topped building later thrived in a new incarnation, Plant Hall on the University of Tampa campus- a role that it has played since 1933. Tampa thrived, too, and soon boasted a second railroad. The Florida Central & Peninsular Railroad opened a line into town on May 1, 1890, and by 1893 had a system that stretched from Tampa to Savannah, Georgia, and beyond.
The Florida Central & Peninsular became part of the Seaboard Air Line Railway upon the creation of that railroad corporation in 1900; the Plant System was absorbed into the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1905. Still another railroad, the Tampa Northern, was incorporated in 1906 as a subsidiary of the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic Railroad; in 1912, its dreams of becoming a direct route from Atlanta to Tampa had been dashed by the bankruptcy of its parent company; that year, the Seaboard Air Line bought the railroad company, which had only gotten as far north as Brooksville.
It would be these three railroad companies-the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line, and the Tampa Northern-that would front the $250,000 needed to build Tampa Union Station at Nebraska and Twiggs Streets downtown, under the auspices of the Tampa Union Station Company. On the day that the city's afternoon newspaper, the Times, let its readers know that everything was "being placed in readiness" at the station, Coast Line and Seaboard agents prepared to move their operations from separate passenger stations-at Polk and Tampa Streets, and Florida Avenue at Whiting Street, 'respectively-into the new building which would serve them jointly.
Using photographs from archives and individuals, Tampa Union Station captures moments in time during the life of the 85-year-old building, including shots of trains such as Seaboard Air Line's Silver Meteor, Atlantic Coast Line's Tampa Special, the departure of groups of unemployed Tampa men for an Emergency Relief Council forest camp during the Great Depression, and other fascinating looks at life at the Station.
In addition to the book serving as a well-crafted look at the rich history of the Station, all royalties from Tampa Union Station will benefit Tampa Union Station Preservation & Redevelopment, Inc. In all, Tampa Union Station is a wonderful look back at a fascinating building.
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