University of Tampa - Campus

Campus

Plant Hall – UT's main building – is heavily steeped in Moorish influences, and serves as a leading example of Moorish Revival architecture in the southeastern United States. Plant Hall also serves as a focal point of downtown Tampa, and is a local landmark. The school's newspaper is named The Minaret, a reference to the spires adorning Plant Hall. Formerly the old Tampa Bay Hotel, Plant Hall is a National Historic Landmark built in 1891 by Henry B. Plant. In addition to serving as the main location of classrooms and faculty and administrative offices, the building also houses the Henry B. Plant Museum dedicated to the hotel’s glory days. The museum regularly holds special exhibits, often highlighting the late-19th century, and admission is free for all students. The campus also includes the former McKay Auditorium, built in the 1920s and remodeled in to late 1990s to become the John H. Sykes College of Business.

The UT campus is relatively small for a school with over 6,500 students. On its east side is the Hillsborough River, and Kennedy Boulevard is to the south. Recent expansions have seen the campus grounds move northward and eastward following purchases of sections of Tampa Preparatory School and vacant lots across the east-side railroad tracks.

Although the University is located in a major metropolitan area, palm trees, stately oaks, rose bushes, and azaleas can be found in abundance on campus. UT’s grounds include Plant Park. The park is a landscaped, palm-tree-lined, riverside area in front of Plant Hall's main entrance. It is open to students and Tampa residents at all hours, and features cannons from Tampa’s original harbor fort and the Sticks of Fire, a large sculpture that serves as a gathering place for many campus organizations. Banana trees and majestic oaks are scattered throughout the park. It also is home to the oak tree under which Hernando de Soto supposedly met the chief of the local Native-American tribes upon first coming ashore at what is now Tampa. Finally, the campus includes the location of the former Florida State Fair grounds, where legend has it that Babe Ruth hit a home run of 630 feet (190 m), the longest of his career. The Fairgrounds now house the Campus's soccer stadium, intramural fields, two dorms, and will soon have a Student Chapel.

UT is also one of few schools with an anti-gravity monument from Roger Babson's Gravity Research Foundation. The "Anti-Gravity Rock", as its commonly referred to, is located on the crosswalk between the College of Business parking lot and the Macdonald-Kelce Library, at the very end of the Science wing of Plant Hall. The stone's location is somewhat ironic, yet appropriate, given that Babson's scientific views were shared by few if any scientists.