A few miles south of Clearwater Beach, you’ll find the bucolic town of Belleair, home to the charming Belleview Inn. But the inn didn’t start its storied life in this exact spot.
In the late 1800s, railroad and steamship magnate Henry B. Plant was developing his Orange Belt Railway through the wilderness of western Florida. He soon realized that the travelers he was trying to attract would need a suitable place to sleep at the end of their journey. Not one to do anything small, Plant built a 400,000-square-foot hotel known as The Hotel Belleview (the largest wooden structure in the state at the time) on a 35-foot-high bluff overlooking what is now Clearwater Bay.
One hundred years of guests included industry and society scions like the Vanderbilts and the DuPonts, plus celebrities like Babe Ruth and Thomas Edison. The hotel even housed members of the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. But by the 1980s, the Queen Anne–style building began to fall into disrepair. To save it from the wrecking ball, a St. Petersburg–area property developer hatched an outlandish plan: in 2018, the original building was loaded onto flatbed trucks and moved to its current location, where it was restored (preserving nearly all of its original architectural features) and relaunched as The Belleview Inn.
Today, the gingerbread-like hotel—with its peaked gables, overhanging shingled roofs, and wide verandas—is part of the Historic Hotels of America, offering a rare glimpse into the charms of yesteryear plus all the amenities that modern travelers expect. For an extra dose of glam, book the Iolanda Suite (named after a turn-of-the-century steam yacht built for Plant’s son, Morton) and soak your cares away in the restored claw-foot tub. Retrieve the complimentary breakfast basket of freshly baked goods and juice delivered to your door every morning and head downstairs for coffee at Maisie’s Pantry, a quaint marketplace with an array of noshes and sips. Or stop in later for a bottle of wine and a charcuterie board to enjoy as you watch the sunset from a rocking chair on the back veranda that overlooks the pool and the Gulf beyond.
When you’ve had your fill of porch-sitting and pool-dipping, head out to one of the more modern amenities accessible to guests: the beach at the Sandpearl Resort (The Belleview Inn’s sister location), or the Belleair Country Club and its two elite golf courses (one of which claims the distinction of being Florida’s first golf course). No matter your pastime, a stay at The Belleview Inn is a glamorous way to relive the past while making some history of your own.
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