1925 Mediterranean Revival Hotel with Baseball-Player Ghost Lore
501 5th Avenue NE, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$$
Luxury resort rates; check the venue website for current pricing and packages.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved hotel grounds; full ADA accommodations.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1925 · National Register of Historic Places · Mediterranean Revival Architecture · 1920s Florida Boom Hotel · WWII Military Training Site
Construction of the Vinoy Park Hotel began in 1924 and the property opened to guests on New Year's Eve 1925. The hotel was the speculation of Aymer Vinoy Laughner, an Indianapolis golfer who had wintered in St. Petersburg and saw the city's bayfront as the next site of a Florida boom-era resort. Architect Henry L. Taylor designed the building in the Mediterranean Revival style fashionable in 1920s Florida hospitality, with stuccoed walls, red-tile roofs, and elaborate Italianate detailing in the public rooms. Locally the hotel became known as the Pink Lady for its distinctive exterior color.
The Vinoy operated as a winter resort for Northern industrialists through the 1920s and 1930s. Babe Ruth, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover were among the documented guests. During World War II the federal government leased the property as a training school for the US Army Air Forces, after which it never recovered its prewar profile. The hotel closed in 1974 and stood vacant for nearly two decades.
A $93 million restoration completed in 1992 returned the property to luxury operation. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Subsequent ownership transitions have included Renaissance Hotels and Marriott; the property has operated under several names including the Renaissance Vinoy Resort and now The Vinoy Resort & Golf Club, Autograph Collection. The hotel sits at 501 5th Avenue NE on the bayfront and continues to serve as the spring-training-season hotel for visiting Major League Baseball teams playing the Tampa Bay Rays.
Sources
The Vinoy occupies an unusual niche in paranormal reporting: the hotel where visiting professional ballplayers consistently file the strangest accounts. The pattern dates to at least the 1990s, when the hotel reopened and immediately began hosting Major League teams in town to play the Tampa Bay Rays. Players have described the property as oddly heavy, particularly on the fifth floor, and the most-quoted single account belongs to Florida Marlins pitcher Scott Williamson.
In 2003, Williamson told the Tampa Bay Times that he was awakened in the early morning by a sensation of pressure on his back. When he opened his eyes, he saw a man in a long coat and top hat standing beside the bed. He reached to turn on the overhead light, and when he turned back the figure was gone. Williamson's account is unusual because he was on the record by name and because subsequent visiting players reported similar experiences. Toronto Blue Jays third-baseman Scott Rolen and several teammates have repeated the broad outline in interviews; pitcher Dirk Hayhurst's account names the same room range and describes a similar figure.
A secondary cluster of legends concerns the hotel's older guests rather than its athletic ones. Staff and guests have reported a woman in white on the fifth floor, sometimes identified by Tampa Bay paranormal researchers as the wife of an early hotel-era guest. Music from the empty Palm Court ballroom is the second-most-cited phenomenon, attributed locally to bandleader Paul Whiteman, who performed at the hotel in the 1930s. The Vinoy was investigated by Jason Hawes and the Ghost Hunters team, who reported activity in room 521.
The hotel itself does not market the ghost stories. Acknowledgments are passive: the legends circulate in regional press, in road-trip-baseball oral histories, and in the steady current of visiting-team interviews each spring.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
A luxury overnight at the 1925 pink-stuccoed resort on Tampa Bay. Visiting Major League Baseball players staying with their teams have repeatedly reported encounters in upper-floor rooms with a figure described as a man in a long coat and top hat. Pitcher Scott Williamson's 2003 account, reported in the Tampa Bay Times, is the most widely cited.
The Vinoy operates several restaurants and bars on its 1925 grounds, including waterfront and lobby venues. Reported phenomena in dining and ballroom areas include music heard from empty rooms and a woman in white seen on the fifth floor.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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