Tampa Bay Hotel view, photochrome print postcard.

The “Florida’s First Magical Kingdom” or simply Tampa Bay Hotel is a hallmark of Florida’s Gilded Age and a stunning example of Turkish and Moorish styled architecture. Florida’s premier hotel during the land and tourism boom in the 1880s and 1890s, it served as the headquarter’s of the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. As Florida’s land boom and the U.S. stock market crashed in late 1920s, the Tampa Bay Hotel was closed in 1930. Currently, the University of Tampa uses the Hotel for classrooms and offices. The south wing of the Hotel remains dedicated to preserving the glory days of the hotel’s past.

Photochrome is a process for producing colorized images from black-and-white photographic negatives via the direct photographic transfer of a negative onto lithographic printing plates. The process was invented in the 1880s and was most popular in the 1890s.

The Detroit Publishing Company was started by publisher William A. Livingstone and photographer Edwin H. Husher. ln 1905 that the company called itself the Detroit Publishing Company. The best-known photographer for the company was William Henry Jackson, who joined the company in 1897. The company acquired exclusive rights to use a form of photography processing called Photochrom. Photochrom allowed for the company to mass-market postcards and other materials in color. We at GetArchive are admirers of their exceptional high-resolution scans of glass negatives collection from the Library of Congress. By the time of World War I, the company faced declining sales both due to the war economy and the competition from cheaper, more advanced printing methods. The company declared bankruptcy in 1924 and was liquidated in 1932.