Obadiah Platt was in love with an idea: the suburb! Get your family out of downtown and into big, beautiful homes. So, twenty years after the Civil War, Platt set out to build Tampa's first real suburb. Platt himself cooked up the name for the neighborhood, according to Rodney Kite-Powell, the curator of history at the Tampa Bay History Center. "He was the one who named Hyde Park, Hyde Park. And he named it after his hometown of Hyde Park in Illinois, just outside of Chicago," Kite-Powell said. In 1891,Henry Plant opened the Tampa Bay Hotel right on the north end of Tampa's newest neighborhood. The hotel is now theUniversity of Tampa's Plant Hall and it was loaded with luxuries, including Florida's first elevator. Almost overnight, Hyde Park became the city's hottest address. So other developers joined onto Platt's Hyde Park project: Alfred Swann, William Morrison, James Watrous, Lee Dekle, and Matthew Jetton all gave their names to Hyde Park streets. And Matthew Jetton's grandson Matt went on to develop another Tampa suburb -- Carrollwood. Why do they call it that? Now you know.If you want to ask "Why do they call it that?" send an e-mail with a name that has you curious to Grayson Kamm using this link. font size="1">We'll be featuring new places and stories each Wednesday on 10 News. Watch them on The Morning Show from 5-7 a.m. and on 10 News at 5:30 p.m. Check out previous editions of "Why do they call it that?" plus links to photos and maps from Tampa Bay's past at our "Why do they call it that?" website: wtsp.com/callitthat./em>Connect with 10 News multi-media journalist Grayson Kamm
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