Tampa was a poor place in 1933. The Depression hit Florida early, in 1927, so five years later, there were no extra public dollars lying around anywhere.
The Tampa Bay Hotel, which had brought national attention to this sleepy fishing village, sat empty. Henry B. Plant had died three decades earlier, sparing him from seeing what his dream had become. His once-opulent fantasy palace was now a home to pigeons.
Then local leaders had the idea of using this former grand hotel, which was now owned by the City of Tampa, as a college. With a freshman class of 200, the University of Tampa was launched. It limped along until 1959, when Dr. David Delo came to town as UT president. According to his book The Last Rites Never Came, the building was decrepit, its main lobby “littered with Coke bottles and rusting metal chairs scattered about dirty, asbestos tile floors.”
Fortunately he had a resourceful wife, aptly named Sunny. She invited eight friends to join her for a lovely Florida crawfish salad lunch, poolside with cocktails. Then she cleverly drafted them to help her clean off the beautiful but neglected tiles that bordered the Tampa Bay Hotel fireplaces. Armed with work gloves, these society ladies dipped the tiles into tubs of muriatic acid and chipped carefully at the mortar stuck to the tiles’ edges.
Thus did the self-named “Chiselers” set about restoring the Tampa Bay Hotel after 60 years of neglect. The structure is 325,000 square feet and contains over 500 rooms. Plant built his mammoth hotel out of brick, concrete and railroad ties, but the wood had been feasted upon by termites for decades. Everything needed fixing.
The Chiselers rolled up their sleeves and set to work… having parties.
They were both ambitious and imaginative in their fund-raising. From punch parties with money trees, they branched into luncheons where they sold handmade objects and donated goods. Past President Betty Wood joked, “It was bad enough that we were called Chiselers… but to launch a ‘Thieves’ Market’ selling used treasures didn’t sound so good. So now it’s our Annual Chiselers Market Day held this year on Saturday, March 12.”
The Chiselers also created an outstanding cookbook and a history of the group’s restoration efforts. They have held benefits at the opening of local hotels and stores and sponsored fashion shows, now in tandem with supporters of the H.B. Plant Museum on the first floor of the hotel.
The Chiselers have evolved from a tightly directed group of eight founding members with 20 “provisionals” to a larger group that requires only a year’s worth of hard labor in its un-air-conditioned warehouse before full membership is achieved.
Originally, the Chiselers’ goals were modest: to improve the building’s derelict conditions, regardless of historic accuracy. For instance, original brass doorhandles were replaced with hardware from the corner store. In 1988, Cynthia Gandee Zinober became director of the museum and set about professionalizing the operation, inviting White House historian William Seale to visit in 1994.
All hell broke loose as he critiqued the previous restoration efforts through the lens of a serious historian. His report prompted the museum to become a lab, researching authentic restoration for paint, windows, woodwork and lighting.
By the time of his second visit, the Chiselers began to warm to “the true excitement of authenticity,” explained Zinober. A deep education process began. Paint colors now had to be analyzed and wallpaper samples studied. And, because authenticity costs money, Abell/Garcia Architects were hired in 1996 to develop a master plan and help write grants to secure the necessary funding.
In the past, people had just donated old things, and the Plant Museum accepted and displayed them without curation. Zinober focused on 1891, the year the hotel opened, to show how the rooms looked then and what life was like, both upstairs and downstairs. She strategically winnowed the museum’s inventory, jettisoning inappropriate objects and collecting period-authentic ones. Betty Wood credits her connoisseurship as the catalyst in the museum’s fortunes.
Zinober also expanded programming to reflect the 1891 timeframe, including the 12th Annual Picnic in the Park, an old-fashioned picnic taking place on Sunday, March 6, beginning at 10 a.m. in Plant Park. The public is invited to this free romp, which includes games of hoops and sticks, croquet, horseshoes, and badminton.
The Chiselers have raised over $3 million for the Tampa Bay Hotel’s restoration, including repointing the bricks and repairing or replacing the huge mahogany windows and doors, opening the stained glass skylight and completely refurbishing Fletcher Lounge. The biggest project still outstanding is the reopening of the mezzanine in the lobby. This dramatic space was unceremoniously covered over with plywood years ago. Removing the lowered ceiling will be a costly but dramatic improvement.
The Chiselers have cited this as their next big goal, and my bet’s on them. I’m awed by the energy and resolve of these women. They truly deserve our appreciation for their focused commitment on preservation for over 50 years.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 2, 2016.