“Winds That Blew History Off Course”
History Magazine, April/May 2007
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David Shelton and Lani Friend,
"U-Boats in the Gulf," New Floridian Magazine, Dec. 2005 - Jan. 2006
"U-Boats in the Gulf," New Floridian Magazine, Dec. 2005 - Jan. 2006
"White Queen of a Gilded Age"
Proposed Article for New Floridian Magazine
Spring 2005
Proposed Article for New Floridian Magazine
Spring 2005
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| The Belleview Biltmore Resort Hotel, Clearwater, FL |
She reigns serenely over Clearwater Bay as a grande dame of the Gilded Age, a golden era of American capitalism when oil tycoons, steel magnates, and railroad barons amassed untold wealth and the leisure to enjoy it.
Opportunistic entrepreneurs like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt formed powerful monopolies in a time of lax business regulation while their society wives competed to throw the most outlandish soirées until tax and antitrust legislation during the Progressive Era brought the party to an end.
It was the heyday of The Belleview Hotel, the creation of the man who put Tampa on the map and helped make Florida the “American Riviera” -- Henry Bradley Plant. The two Henrys, Plant and Flagler, built transportation and hotel empires that set the stage for Florida to become the tourist capital of the world. Their lavish resorts introduced New York City sophistication that “transformed Florida from a semi-wilderness visited mainly by sportsmen and invalids into a destination for the rich and famous,” according to area historian R. Wayne Ayers, author of Florida’s Grand Hotels from the Gilded Age. Located far from habitation, these hotels, says Ayers, offered an “oasis of comfort” where their upper class clientele could enjoy being in an exotic setting with all the comforts of the Fifth Avenue mansions they left behind.
Many of these sites were so inaccessible that “Flagler and Plant had to lay tracks and construct bridges before building the hotels,” writes Susan R. Braden in The Architecture of Leisure: The Florida Resort Hotels of Henry Flagler and Henry Plant. Plant’s Belleview Hotel and Tampa Bay Hotel became “celebrated examples of Florida’s rich architectural heritage” along with Henry Flagler’s Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine and the Royal Poinciana and Breakers in Palm Beach. “Plant and Flagler were visionaries of their time,” observes Ayers, “seeing the tourism and recreational possibilities of the state and creating both the means and the ends to achieve them.”
Starting at Charleston, the Plant System of railroads stretched all the way to Chattahoochee, and ended at Tampa, Plant’s second choice for the terminus of his operations. Cedar Key was the first until, believing he had been swindled in a real estate deal, Plant vowed to “wipe Cedar Key off the map.” With the construction of Plant’s rail and steamship lines, Tampa’s real estate values soared. In the words of a visitor in the 1880s, “the land is said to be without value, but the air is worth one thousand dollars an acre.”
An Alpine Resort and Future Town
Plant’s concept was to build a luxury winter resort that would provide the nucleus of a future town called Belleair. In this respect, the hotel complex, planned with many recreational benefits such as golf, swimming, fishing, horseback riding, boat trips to Sand Key, and a high stakes casino could be considered one of Florida’s first experiments in planned communities.
In January of 1897 Plant opened the Belleview Hotel after two years of construction. Sharon Delahanty, Executive Administrative Assistant of the Belleview Biltmore Resort, explains that it was built by the hotel’s own lumberyard with heart-of-pine timber from Georgia and Florida, said to be termite-resistant and almost fire-proof. Several thousand laborers occupied a separate building the size of a hotel wing that later served as quarters for the hotel staff.
Tampa architects Michael Miller and Francis Kennard chose a Swiss chalet style of design popular in country retreats at the time to evoke Alpine villages and their healthy outdoor lifestyle. The Belleview was to be a casual countryside retreat in contrast to the urbane formality of Plant’s flagship facility, the grandiose Tampa Bay Hotel.
The five-story Belleview fronted on Clearwater Bay and contained 145 rooms, 100 of which were guest rooms, most with a view of the water. It was cutting edge for its time. An early hotel brochure cited by Ayers guarantees “three electric lights in each room” with electricity generated by the hotels’ own steam plant.
An interesting feature of the architecture, explains Braden, is a wood and iron-rod arched framework resembling a railroad bridge that extends through all five stories. Originally, the hotel sported a yellow exterior and red roof. When Morton Plant took over from his father, the hotel gained white paint, green shingles, and the nickname “The White Queen of the Gulf.” The first kitchen and laundry were in a separate building with a slate roof to avoid fires. Eventually, the hotel had its own fire department and police force.
“Unlike today,” says Ayers, “the Victorians preferred to keep untamed nature at bay, viewing the sea with a mixture of awe and fear. So the hotel, like other seaside resorts of the time, was located a civilized distance from the beach.” Boats leaving from the boathouse at the end of the pier took guests to the 400-acre hotel property on Sand Key to while away the hours fishing, picnicking, and strolling the beach much like today’s tourists.
Winter at the Belleview: A Golden Season
Time to escape the frozen gusts of the Northeast, so with family, friends, household staff and steamer trunks in tow, you board a “thru Pullman” from New York or Chicago to Tampa for the winter season, December through March. The train delivers your party to the doors of the Belleview Hotel where you may reside in an elegant suite of rooms or, like the Disstons and Pews of Philadelphia, in your own private cottage, one of a dozen built on the grounds at the turn of the century. The guest register includes the Studebakers, the Duponts, and the Vanderbilts.
Your private rail car is parked on the siding, as staff escorts you to the spacious lobby where an orchestra entertains. The children are whisked off by the French nanny to the oversized sand boxes or to the stable for riding lessons while the adults enjoy refreshments in the tea garden and perhaps croquet.
After lunch, a group forms for a round of golf on the new eighteen-hole courses developed in 1915 by the noted Donald J. Ross. The topsoil for the greens has been shipped in trainloads from Indiana to replace the original crushed shells. The Belleview is renown as a “Golfers’ Paradise” since 1898 when Launcelot Cressy Servos designed a six-hole course, said to be Florida’s first.
Garbed in your formal shirt, jacket, tie, and bowler, with your wife in full skirt and long-sleeved shirt, you take a spin on a two-wheeler around the bicycle track that doubles for horseracing, or you venture out in your new Pierce-Arrow, enjoying a trendier sport of the day, driving.
Little Edward, Mildred and Rose are delivered for an outing along the gardens and walkways winding among the landscaped grounds where they can buy candy from the shop in the Roman-arched bridge or visit its museums of stuffed animals. Lessons in the schoolhouse on the hotel grounds and organized games occupy the rest of their day.
Time to check on how business is faring, so back to the lobby where telegraph, telephone, and post office keep you and industry giants like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford in touch with the home office and the latest Dow Jones averages. Then it’s down to the basement for bowling or a portrait appointment at the photography studio.
The menu for dinner in the Grand Tiffany Dining Room is adapted from one featured, according to Ayers and Braden, at the first dinner held in 1888 at the Hotel Ponce de Leon: “Appetizers of Cream Soup à la Reine or Croquettes of Shrimp Robert; Entrées of Roast Ribs of Beef with Mashed Potatoes, Ham with Madeira Sauce and Cauliflower, or Lamb Chops with Peas; for dessert, Cocoanut Pie, Calf’s Foot Jelly, Fruit Cake, Cheeses, and Coffee.” The children are neither seen nor heard, as Nanny ushers them adroitly down a hidden staircase to their own dining room.
Table talk revolves around the recent and untimely deaths of Col. Astor and Mr. Rothschild on the Titanic a few years ago and whether this country will become embroiled in “the European War.” Memories of C. K. G. Billing’s party a few years back for the New York Riding Club at Sherry’s Restaurant on Fifth Avenue brings gales of laughter as fellow guests recall being served mounted on their steeds by uniformed livery and sipping champagne out of saddlebags. After dinner, musicals, concerts, and dancing are the order of the evening along with billiards in the parlor. Men retire to the bar for cigars and liqueur, while ladies repair to the sitting rooms for conversation and gin daisies.
And so your days and nights pass in harmonious diversion until your entourage boards the train and rejoins the urban beehives of Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Manhattan just in time to repack for your summer getaway to Newport.
The Twentieth Century Brings Change
Two years after the Belleview Hotel opened, Plant died at his home in New York City, and his son, Morton, ran the hotel until his death in 1918. The next year John McEntee Bowman of the Biltmore Hotel chain bought the hotel from the Plant Investment Company, renaming it the Belleview Biltmore Hotel.
Several additions in 1910 and 1925 expanded the hotel to 292 rooms. A large swimming pool was constructed with Italian mosaic tiles by workers brought from Italy. It was later used for Olympic trials. The hotel hosted famous athletes like baseball legends Joe Di Maggio, Babe Ruth, and golfer Johnny Farrell. The Coe Casino offered high-stakes gambling above a gourmet restaurant.
In World War II, the U.S. Army Air Corps moved 3,000 servicemen into the hotel and used it as barracks, warehousing most of the hotel’s luxury furnishings and records which were later sent to other hotels or auctioned off. According to Jennifer Addison, Director of Marketing for the resort, the exterior windows were painted over for blackout regulations, and even the original solid brass chandeliers were covered in six coats of olive drab.
After the war, the hotel was sold at auction and closed until it was bought by a Detroit investment group headed by Bernard and Mary Powell. In the late 1940s the hotel was renovated and returned to its original splendor. Powell later built the Cabana and Beach Club across the Intracoastal Waterway from the hotel.
In 1979 the Belleview Biltmore Hotel was placed on National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its significance as a Florida heritage site. The Mido Development Company of Osaka, Japan, bought the hotel ten years later adding an Oriental restaurant and decor, but sold it, according to Ayers, on learning that the golf course on the grounds of the property was not part of the deal.
In 1997 an Atlanta development group bought it and returned the name to the Belleview Biltmore. Today the resort is managed by Trust Hotels. Modern visitors have included movie stars, celebrities, and notables such as the Duke of Windsor and Lady Thatcher.
A Lasting Legacy
So did anyone from the Gilded Age stick around, so to speak? “Is it haunted? It can be if you want it to be,” quipped Addison, citing legends about Maesie Plant and her lost million dollar pearls, a suicidal bride, and unseen taps on the shoulder in the bakery, subjects of Orlando Ghost Tours weekend investigations. Windows swing open and doors creak, remarks Delahanty “but if you were 108 years old, you’d creak, too. It’s a fascinating place. Once she gets hold of you, she doesn’t let you go. “
The ghost tours follow a system of underground tunnels still in use with tracks for handcars once used to unload luggage and supplies from the trains. Addison described the feeling of stepping back in time that enriches the hotel experience. “You can still see the trapdoor in the floor of the ladies’ tea room that allowed food to be brought up from the tunnels. There is a positive energy in the property. Everyone loves to wander the hallways and admire the art and architecture. I want to finish my career here, and then haunt the property.”
Special thanks to Jennifer Addison and Sharon Delahanty of the Belleview Biltmore Resort for their help in research for this article. For more history visit www.belleviewbiltmore.com
