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Former Guest Roosevelt To Narrate Museum Tour

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By JANIS D. FROELICH, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 28, 2007

Updated: 11/26/2007 09:56 pm

DOWNTOWN - The audio wands informing visitors about the Henry B. Plant Museum were to be ready this month.

Only Teddy Roosevelt's voice wasn't quite right.

"He needed to sound more like the Harvard-educated gentleman he was," said Cynthia Gandee, the museum's executive director.

So back to the workshop went Discovery Audio, a California company known for producing audio tours of destinations such as the former Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay and the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.

Now that Teddy's voice is up to snuff, the hand-held audio wands, which weigh a pound or two, will be available for rent for $4 a tour beginning Jan. 2.

The hourlong audio is played by pressing a button, much like on a TV remote control. Visitors will be handed a playlist ranging from No. 1 - tour introduction - to No. 25 - famous guests.

Other notables mentioned in the tour include inventor Thomas Edison and movie star Gloria Swanson, who were guests at Plant's Tampa Bay Hotel, which opened in 1891 and now houses the museum and the University of Tampa.
Gandee said museum staff did the research and Discovery provided the script. Once the funding for the $50,000 project was secured from Citigroup Foundation and the Plant Museum Society, the production went quickly, she said. The audio tour will supplement the video shown every 14 minutes in a side room.

Those providing voices on the audio tour include Gandee and curator Susan Carter. Also, architectural historian William Seale of Alexandria, Va., editor of "White House History," offers insight. He tagged the hotel "the most interesting building in town," citing its exotic Moorish design.

Seale also noted how the hotel catered to guests' pleasures.

About 300 staff members scurried about serving the wealthy Northerners who came for the winter months. A recording of a letter written by a young guest recalls how she saw a menagerie of monkeys and peacocks on the lawn, which swoops down to the Hillsborough River.

Roosevelt, who came to Tampa to organize 30,000 troops for the Spanish-American War, wrote to his children - or "Bunnies," as he called them - that he was glad their "darling mother" came to visit him at the hotel.

The tour leads visitors to a Feb. 6, 1891, newspaper in the once men-only Writing and Reading Room. The hotel's opening day headline: 'Tis Done.

For No. 9 on the tour, visitors are directed to a pair of dancing girl statues, which the narrative relates were considered shocking in their day. The women hold electric lights, revolutionary for the time.

Not only facts but also rumors are addressed in the audio tour, such as the story behind the red lion carpet in one room.

Plant, an innovative railroad tycoon, ordered 17 miles of the carpet for his hotel after hearing the design had been rejected by Queen Victoria. The British royals didn't want to walk on the symbol of their empire, so they canceled their order after the carpet had been readied.

"It adds to the fun to include the myths," Gandee said.

IF YOU GO

For information about Henry B. Plant Museum tours, call (813) 254-1891 or go to www.plant museum.com.

Tours are $5 for ages 12 and older and $2 for others. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Reporter Janis D. Froelich can be reached at (813) 835-2104 or jfroelich@tampatrib.com. Keyword: Plant Tour, to hear excerpts of the Henry B. Plant Museum's new audio tour.

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