COMMAERNTTARY
THE BELLEVIEW RETURNS
This is a story of a man and
a paintbrush and two large
dramatic pieces of art that
help tell the story of what
By John Wilson
was the largest occupied wooden
building in America, the Hotel
Belleview. Christopher Still, the
master artist known for his Florida
landscapes, wildlife and people, has
captured with brush strokes on canvas, the glorious days of the
Belleview after it opened in 1897. The hotel in Belleair helped
prime the Tampa Bay area to become what it is today.
The Belleview was built by Connecticut railroad magnet
Henry B. Plant. His son Morton doubled the size of the hotel
after his father Henry died in 1899, just two years after the hotel
opened in 1897. What Christopher Still has done in his artwork
preserves the memory of the Plants and what they did for the
entire state of Florida and especially for Tampa Bay, which became
a thriving seaport with Henry Plant’s steamship line and railway
system. The artwork is now on permanent display in a revitalized
Belleview that was restored and rebuilt by JMC Communities. J.
Michael Cheezem, the company’s CEO, has spent an estimated
$130 million on the Belleview Place project, which included
preserving the style and flavor of the original hotel, moving it
300 feet and turning it 90 degrees. He then constructed a new
entrance for the building that is now called the Belleview Inn.
The first of Christopher Still’s two large canvases displays a
stunning wide-angle side view of the massive hotel overlooking
Clearwater Harbor, as it was in the 1900s. It has Henry Plant’s
passenger train, his steamships, a sailboat, people in windows
John Wilson
144 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
and standing on a porch, bicycles,
a 1908 Simplex roadster driven by
Morton Plant’s son, an image of
Christopher Still himself painting,
the spring house just off shore, which
provided fresh water to the hotel,
and the swimmers’ bathhouse. A
clever outline of Henry Plant himself
is captured in a beautiful cloud above
the hotel and if you look closely, you will see the famous outline
of the state of Florida reflected in the water. Two separate portraits
of Henry and Morton Plant reflect the most detailed looks yet
of their faces.
Still’s second large canvas is a collection of notable items
connected directly with the Plants, the grand hotel when it was
in its glory, and the excitement and energy of the hotel that
came with the presence of notable guests including the Duke of
Windsor, Babe Ruth and even Thomas Alva Edison, who wired
the hotel for electricity. The artist’s artwork was years in the
making and inspired by a personal trip to Plant’s hometown in
Connecticut. His research included reading first-person accounts
of what life was like working for Henry Plant. Still was drawn
into the personal life of a caring, respected man and into an age
of achievement between the end of the Civil War and the Great
Depression. The new Belleview Inn honors that legacy with
Christopher Still’s masterful artwork, which magically takes us
back to the late 1800s during history’s Gilded Age. 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: John Wilson, who retired from Fox TV in 2014,
worked more than 50 years in radio and television news broadcasting.