The Henry B. Plant Museum is located in the south wing of Plant Hall on the University of Tampa's campus in Florida. Plant Hall was formerly known as the Tampa Bay Hotel, which was a 511-room resort hotel opened in 1891 and was built by Henry B. Plant near the terminus of his rail line. Unlike most museums dedicated to lifestyles of the past, it contains the actual furnishings enjoyed by the first guests to visit there. The Museum accurately reflects the opulence of turn-of-the-century America and the vision of American transportation pioneer, Henry B. Plant. The museum's exhibits focus on Gilded Age tourism, the elite lifestyle of the hotel's guests, and the building's use during the Spanish–American War. The Tampa Bay Hotel was built between 1888 and 1891 and the construction cost over $3 million. The hotel itself covers 6 acres and is a quarter-mile long. It was equipped with the first elevator ever installed in Florida. The elevator is still working today, making it one of the oldest continually operational elevators in the nation. Henry B. Plant was a railroad magnate, successful businessman, and founder of the Plant System of railroads and steamboats; he brought the railroad to Tampa, Florida in 1884. The entire building (under the title of Tampa Bay Hotel) is a U.S. National Historic Landmark and is known as a stunning example of Moorish and Turkish architecture. Complete with ornate Victorian architecture features (sometimes referred to as gingerbread), as well as Moorish architectural features including minarets, cupolas, and domes. The hotel’s distinctive silver minarets are each topped with a crescent moon.—plantmuseum.com, Wikipedia
Downtown Portsmouth, is a center of activity with art galleries, bookstores, antique shops, ethnic restaurants and many original 17th-century buildings. Portsmouth is a city in the state of New Hampshire. A historic seaport and popular summer tourist destination on the Piscataqua River bordering the state of Maine. Portsmouth shipbuilding history has had a long symbiotic relationship with Kittery, Maine, across the Piscataqua River. In 1781–1782, the naval hero John Paul Jones lived in Portsmouth while he supervised construction of his ship Ranger, which was built on nearby Badger's Island in Kittery. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was established in 1800 during the administration of President John Adams, and is the U.S. Navy's oldest continuously operating shipyard. It sits on a cluster of conjoined islands called Seavey's Island in the Piscataqua River, whose swift tidal current prevents ice from blocking navigation to the Atlantic Ocean.—Wikipedia
Gateway Arch National Park, formerly known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial until 2018, is an national park located in St. Louis, Missouri, near the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Gateway Arch and its immediate surroundings were initially designated as a national memorial by Presidential executive order on December 21, 1935, and redesignated as a national park in 2018. The park is maintained by the National Park Service. The national park consists of the Gateway Arch, a steel catenary arch that has become the definitive icon of St. Louis; a 91-acre park along the Mississippi River on the site of the earliest buildings of the city; the Old Courthouse, a former state and federal courthouse where the Dred Scott case originated; and the 140,000 sq ft museum at the Gateway Arch. The Gateway Arch, known as the "Gateway to the West", is the tallest structure in Missouri. It was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen and structural engineer Hannskarl Bandel in 1947 and built between 1963 and October 1965. It stands 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide at its base. The legs are 54 feet wide at the base, narrowing to 17 feet at the arch. There is a unique tram system to carry passengers to the observation room at the top of the arch.—Wikipedia—This image was processed as an HDR (High Dynamic Range) composition.
