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The Gilded Age in Tampa Bay

When Florida Learned to Dream Big

A talk connecting the social and economic forces of wealth, inequality, technology, and spectacle, to the story of how Tampa Bay transformed into one of America's most distinctive cultural landscapes.

Inspired by the renewed public fascination of the era through HBO’s The Gilded Age, Dr. Greg Thompson will explore how Florida, once seen as remote and undeveloped, became a playground for ambition, architecture, and luxury at the turn of the 20th century. Learn about figures such as Henry B. Plant, who built the grand Tampa Bay Hotel (now the University of Tampa), and John Ringling, whose Venetian-style mansion in Sarasota embodied America’s new appetite for status, art, and leisure.

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