Learn

City Ties Program

Learn

Resources to enhance your Museum experience

Educators, are you looking for classroom activities that relate to your field trip or local social studies content?
 
The Henry B. Plant Museum and the Ybor City State Museum have partnered to bring you the City Ties Tour and Activity.  We want to make Ybor City and Tampa’s unique histories and their ties more accessible to you and your students.

Experience history!

To help students make the connection between Ybor and Tampa, the City Ties Tour is designed to offer a one-day field trip opportunity to the Ybor City State Museum and the Henry B. Plant Museum.
 
Start your morning at the Ybor City State Museum to learn about the founding and evolution of Ybor City and the cigar industry and visit a restored cigar worker’s house. Continue your journey to the Henry B. Plant Museum to experience life in the Gilded Age at the opulent Tampa Bay Hotel and learn about how Henry Plant influenced the development of Tampa.

With these online activities you and your students will:

  • Access projects that are tailored to teach/reinforce local history
  • Learn using primary sources
  • Cover social studies curriculum for grades 4-6
  • Use cross-discipline skills


Click on the online Educator lesson plans to tie your field trip together.  Use the materials to reinforce field trip knowledge or as a stand-alone activity. 
 
For questions or to schedule your City Ties Tour, contact Todd Edwards at 813.258.7301 or tedwards@ut.edu.
 

At the Ybor City Museum State Park

  • Explore the community that helped build the Tampa of today
  • Discover Ybor City, Tampa’s National Historic Landmark District, once the center of one of the world’s largest and most famous cigar industries.
  • Learn about the founders of Ybor City, the immigrant communities, life in Ybor City, and the effects of world events as seen through the lens of the Ybor City experience. 


The Museum offers a number of specialized activities tailored to many curriculum standards in both social studies and science.  Contact emccoy@ybormuseum.org for more details.

 

At the Henry B. Plant Museum

  • Discover the Gilded Age in 19th century Florida & experience the luxurious turn-of-the-century lifestyle
  • Learn about the life and work of Henry B. Plant, the Tampa Bay Hotel, and the Victorian era
  • Hear how Plant’s steamships, railroads, and hotels contributed to the development of Tampa and Florida
  • Find out how the Hotel gained international recognition in 1898 when it was headquarters for the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War


The docent-led tour and pre-visit materials address many Florida State Social Studies content for grades 3 – 12.