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Location As Florida's fourth largest city, St. Petersburg is a beautiful peninsula located on Florida's West coast. St. Pete is bordered by the Gulf of Mexico to the west and by Tampa Bay to the east. In recent years, the city has hosted the NCAA Men's Final Four and Vice Presidential debates and welcomed the Devil Rays Baseball team into Tropicana Field as their permanent home. The city also hosts the annual St. Petersburg Grand Prix street race each year in April. St. Pete is located on one the nation’s most beautiful waterfront parks and is fast becoming one of the most attractive cities in the country, thanks to a recent effort to renovate and restore its historic downtown area. With an average temperature of 73.6 degrees, St. Petersburg usually records 361 days a year of sunshine. (For more information on St. Petersburg, visit www.stpete.org and www.floridasbeach.com) The heartbeat of downtown St. Petersburg, the Vinoy Resort is just 20 minutes from Tampa International Airport, home to more than 20 major and regional airlines with thousands of flights a day to and from major U.S. and international cities. Make your reservations at the Vinoy Resort for Meridium Conference 2010 here in order to receive the special conference rate of $189/night. History of the Vinoy Resort Though open only during the winter season, the Vinoy Park Hotel, as it was known at the time, quickly became one of the nation’s most prestigious destinations. A wonder of dramatic architecture, handcrafted details and extraordinary luxury, the Vinoy was the grandest of all the 1920s Boom Era hotels, a coveted destination for the world’s richest and most famous. Entire families would arrive for the winter season—among them the Fleischmanns and the Pillsburys—along with Hollywood stars, celebrities, presidents and authors: Jimmy Stewart, Babe Ruth, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover and H.L. Mencken. World War II brought sweeping changes to the nation and the Vinoy. The military needed housing, so hotels in St. Petersburg were leased to the United States Air Force and later the United States Maritime Service. Trainees began arriving in June 1942, and by mid-summer there were more than 10,000 soldiers in the city. At the Vinoy, the kitchens that once had catered so lavishly to well-heeled guests became a training ground for army cooks and bakers. Troops marched through the tiled halls and bunked in the rooms were millionaires once slept. The hotel had removed all the rugs and floor coverings prior to leasing to the Air Force, and every day the troops had to “GI” the floors – clean them with soap and water. The practice wreaked havoc on the hotel floors, especially the beautiful maple floors of the Ballroom. By the time the training center was finally closed, more than one hundred thousand trainees had passed through the City of St. Petersburg. The war took a heavy toll on the Vinoy, which closed for repairs before re-opening in 1945. During the nation’s post-war boom, the Vinoy resumed its place as the heartbeat of St. Petersburg and a favored winter destination of the social set. Marilyn Monroe is said to have visited the Vinoy with her fiancé, Joe DiMaggio, during spring training. During the late 1940s and the ‘50s, the hotel continued to be the social center of St. Petersburg. But lack of air conditioning and necessary repairs led to the Vinoy’s slow decline. It closed in 1974. For 18 long years, the once beautiful Vinoy sat unattended and decaying. It was scheduled to be demolished, but a voter referendum by the loyal citizens of St. Petersburg saved it from the wrecker’s ball. It took two years and $93 million to bring the Vinoy back to its former splendor. Finally, in 1992 the fabled Vinoy opened once again. Today, the Vinoy is listed on the prestigious National and Local Register of Historic Places, and is also a member of Historic Hotels of America. The Vinoy has recently been named as one of the “500 Greatest Hotels and Resorts in the World” by Travel & Leisure Magazine. In 2005, readers of Conde Nast Traveler magazine ranked the Vinoy as one of the “Best Places to stay in the Whole Wide World” for the third year in a row. About St. Petersburg Thirteen years later, Peter Demens, a noble Russian aristocrat, brought the Orange Belt Railway to St. Petersburg. On June 8, 1888, the first train arrived, carrying empty freight cars and one passenger, a shoe salesman from Savannah. Built one rail at a time, with unpaid laborers and creditors threatening to lynch Demens all the way, the railroad finally chugged to St. Petersburg. Demens named the city after his birthplace, St. Petersburg, Russia. The year 1914 brought two firsts to St. Petersburg. The rich history of spring training and Florida's love affair with baseball began that year when the city's former mayor, Al Lang, convinced Branch Rickey to move his St. Louis Browns to the Sunshine City for spring training. Also that year, Tony Jannus flew his Benoist airplane across Tampa Bay in 23 minutes, skimming across the water at a height of 50 feet. The event is commonly hailed as the birth of commercial aviation. The boom years in the 1920s brought notable architecture to St. Petersburg. The city's architecture reflected a Mediterranean Revival motif, fostered in large part by Perry Snell, who created a 275-acre subdivision, Snell Isle. St. Petersburg's Mediterranean Revival makeover is evident in several buildings, including the Vinoy. For more on the history of St. Petersburg, click here. |
Things to Do in St. Pete Visit these links for more information.
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