“Mr. Plant’s hotel, upon which he has spent about $2,000,000 on the building and grounds and $500,000 for the furnishing, and which is nearly ready for the opening, is in the centre of a sixteen-acre plot of ground just north of the city bridge. The architecture is Moorish, patterned after the palaces in Spain, and minarets and domes tower above the great five-story building, each one of which is surmounted with a crescent, which is lighted by electricity at night. The main building is 511 feet in length, and varies in width from 50 to 150 feet. A wide hall, on either side of which are bedrooms, single and in suites, runs the entire length of the building to the dining-room at the southern end. The exterior walls are of darkened brick, with buff and red brick arches and stone dressings. The cornices are of stone and iron; the piazza columns are of steel, supported on pieces of cut stone. “The main entrances are through three pairs of double doors, flanked by sixteen polished granite columns, supporting Moorish arches, over which balconies open from the gallery around the rotunda to the second floor. The principal staircase is of stone, and the horseshoe arch and the crescent and the star meet the eye at every turn--the electric lights in the dining-hall, the music-hall, the drawing-room, the reception-room, the reading-room, and the office being arranged after these patterns. The drawing-room is a casket of beautiful and antique things, embracing fine contrasts. There are a sofa and two chairs which were once the property of Marie Antoinette; a set of four superb gilt chairs which once belonged to Louis Philippe; two antique Spanish cabinets, and between ten high, wide windows appear Spanish, French, and Japanese cabinets, both old and quaint. Old carved Dutch chairs, rare onyx chairs, and queer seats of other kinds are scattered along the hall. Among the large collection of oil paintings, water-colors, and engravings, are portraits and old pictures of Spanish castles and fortresses. “A large rustic gate for carriages and two for pedestrians lead into the grounds on the northern side. These gates are made of cabbage-palmetto trunks, the mid-ribs being of the leaves worked into a quaint and rustic design. On either side of the great gate stand giant cabbage-palmettoes, thirty and forty feet high, set in groups of five and seven, the Moorish numbers. A number of large live-oaks, one a tree of great breadth and beauty, remain on the grounds. Near the centre of the lawn a fort has been built of white stone, having two embrasures. In it are mounted two old cannon that were spiked on the reservation of Tampa during the Civil War. The grounds front on the Hillsborough River and overlook the city, Fort Brooke and Tampa Bay, and are filled with fruit-trees, roses and flowers.