Q.
We’re looking for things to do in Florida in the summer, when it’s too hot to go to the beach. We plan a swing around the state but will skip the theme parks. – Robin A., Delray Beach
A.
Here’s a plan: Visit college campuses. Florida has some small private colleges that are jewels, each in a different way, such as the campus designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and two others housed in luxury hotels built by railroad barons.
They’re scattered around Central Florida, often in cities with other worthwhile things to see. All offer tours or provide maps for self-guided tours.
Flagler College in St. Augustine is my favorite, with its Tiffany-designed dining room and gaudy Spanish Renaissance architecture.
When railroad tycoon Henry Flagler decided to build hotels down the east coast of Florida to house tourists who arrived on his trains, the first of his 11 was the Ponce DeLeon in St. Augustine. That was in 1887, and today the hotel is Flagler College’s main building.
Students live in rooms once occupied by five U.S. presidents and the likes of Will Rogers and John D. Rockefeller. They eat cafeteria-style in the huge oval dining room, where they can enjoy the Tiffany windows, the murals by George Maynard, the 100 gilded lions with light bulbs in their mouths encircling the room that has a 36-foot ceiling with high clerestory windows. This place is a knockout. A $20 million restoration in the 1980s included $2 million for the dining room alone.
Another standout in the building is the 165-foot dome in a rotunda paved with a mosaic of marble and onyx. The twin-towered main building fronts King Street, near George Street in St. Augustine’s restored area.
Deborah Squires, public relations spokesperson at Flagler College, said student-led guided tours are offered from now through mid-August, weekdays from 10 to 4, no appointment needed. Meet at the lobby desk, where visitors can also pick up brochures for self-guided tours. An annual open house with guided tours is in January. Write to Flagler College at 74 King St., St. Augustine, Fla., 32084 or phone 1-904-829-6481, ext. 201.
Florida Southern College in Lakeland has the world’s largest one-site group of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings. When Dr. Ludd Spivey, then president of the college, wanted a new campus design, he didn’t fool around. He chose a man who even then – in 1938 – was famous as one of the world’s most imaginative architects.
Wright, no shrinking violet, called the campus “A child of the sun, out of the ground and into the light” and predicted that the buildings “will be standing a thousand years into the future.”Wright was 67 when he first visited the campus site amid hillside orange groves overlooking a lake. He continued working on it for 20 years.
I like the Thad Buckner building, the original library, with clerestory windows that bring in so much natural light electric lights are seldom needed. This building now includes the visitor center. Also nice are the Danforth Chapel, with its leaded glass and red cypress woodwork; and the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, considered to be the most representative of Wright’s work, with a tower that looks like either a bow tie or a bicycle rack and is called both by students.
Guided tours are available for $5 per person when staff members are available. Free maps for self-guided walking tours are available at the visitors center or from a box near the campus entrance. Call 1-813-680-4118 or write Florida Southern, 111 Lake Hollingsworth Drive, Lakeland, Fla. 33801-56598. It is off Interstate 4 between Orlando and Tampa.
Rollins College has a beautiful campus of Mediterranean-style buildings and brick streets on the shores of Lake Virginia, on Park Avenue in downtown Winter Park, a quiet little city just north of Orlando.
The campus features a Walk Of Fame, consisting of rocks collected from places important to authors, poets and so on. The Cornell Fine Arts museum contains exhibits of American and European paintings, decorative arts and sculpture.
Near campus is the outstanding Morse Museum of American Art, with a major collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Park Avenue, which the campus adjoins, has upscale boutiques and restaurants.
“Student ambassadors” guide campus tours, which may be arranged through the office of admissions; call 1-407-646-2202.
Stetson University in DeLand, named for the hat maker whose contributions helped to build the college in the late 1800s, is Florida’s oldest private university. Twelve of the handsome red brick buildings on its 150-acre campus form a National Historic District. Elizabeth Hall reminds visitors of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Also on campus and open to the public are the Gillespie Museum of Minerals, containing 25,000 specimens, and the Sampson Gallery of Art.
Self-guided-tour maps can be obtained at the school’s public relations office on Woodland Boulevard. Group tours can be arranged; call 1-904-822-7000 or write Stetson University, DeLand, Fla. 32720-3771. DeLand is in lake country between Orlando and Daytona Beach, just north of I-4.
University of Tampa has a spectacular centerpiece, the Moorish-styled Plant Hall, complete with exotic minarets, cupolas and domes, a total contrast to modern Tampa.
The building, now administration center and classrooms for the private liberal arts university, was built as a hotel by railroad magnate Henry Plant, a Flagler rival who opened the luxurious Tampa Bay Hotel in 1891.
Theodore Roosevelt used the hotel as his headquarters as he prepared for the ride up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. And Babe Ruth signed his first baseball contract in the grand dining room.
Plant Hall is a National Historic Landmark. The high lobby, circled by a second-floor balcony, shows off massive statues. The hotel ballroom is now a theater, the grand salon shows off many original furnishings, and the Henry B. Plant Museum houses opulent furnishings and art from the old hotel. Visitors may watch a film about the hotel’s origins.
The campus, on 69 acres of waterfront property, is across the Hillsborough River from downtown Tampa. Free guided tours are scheduled at 1:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, without reservations, to visitors who gather in the lobby of Plant Hall. A brochure with map and self-guided walking tour is available in the Office of Development and University relations. Call 1-813-253-6220, or write University of Tampa, 401 W. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, Fla. 33606-1490.
Jean Allen welcomes questions about travel. Send them to Advice and Dissent, Sun-Sentinel, 200 E. Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 33301-2293. Personal replies are not possible.
