The Floridan Hotel
$250.00
The Floridan Hotel opened in 1927 with 19 floors and 316 rooms, at a cost of $1.9 million to build. At the time, the Floridan was the tallest building in Florida and would remain the tallest building in Tampa until 1966.
The hotel’s bar, the Sapphire Room, was a popular nightspot during World War II for servicemen who were training at nearby Drew Field to fly B-17s over Europe. Many of the service men at that time were housed in makeshift barracks located underneath the bleachers at the old Florida State Fairgrounds racetrack a few blocks away. The bar’s wild reputation at the time earned it the nickname “The Surefire Room.”
It was truly a hotel fit for a king - Elvis Presley stayed there in 1955 after a concert at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory. But by the 1980s, the once grand and luxurious hotel had begun decline. The Floridan, now only serving long term renters, closed its doors in 1989.
After seven years of restoration, the hotel opened again to the public on July 30, 2012, as the Floridan Palace Hotel. The Floridan’s original sign, which was found in a rooftop storage room during the cleaning of the building in 2005, and had adorned the building’s roof for decades, was restored and placed on the hotel’s rooftop once more in late summer of 2008.
The Floridan was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
The 36"x24" (includes 2" border) archival giclée is printed by a local atelier on acid-free watercolor paper and features rich, saturated colors, deep dark tones, and finely nuanced details. Each museum quality print is inspected and approved by Tim Boatright before being signed and sealed with his embossed artist’s “chop.”
Please note: each piece is printed to order and may take up to three weeks to ship. The print is ready for framing.
