The Biltmore Hotel

The largest swimming pool in the world once had Tarzan teaching lengths in it.

The Miami Biltmore in Coral Gables was designed by Schultze and Weaver and built in 1926 by John McEntee Bowman and George Merrick, part of the Biltmore hotel chain. Merrick, a land developer, joined forces with Bowman in 1925 at the height of the Florida land boom to build what they described as a great hotel that would serve the crowds thronging to Coral Gables and act as a centre of sport and fashion.

The tower is modelled on the Giralda, the medieval tower of the cathedral at Seville. At 315 feet it was the tallest building in Florida when it opened, holding that record until the Dade County Courthouse went up in 1928. Its pool was at one time the largest in the world, and the swimming instructor employed there was Johnny Weissmuller, who later played Tarzan.

The middle of its life was harder. It served as a hospital during the Second World War, then as a Veterans Administration hospital and a campus of the University of Miami medical school until 1968. After that it stood abandoned for years, before reopening as a hotel in 1987. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

WLRN, Miami's public radio station, has covered its history under the honest headline of Miami's best-known creepy hotel, noting that the interior is rumoured to be haunted and that the building was a military hospital and a medical school.

That middle stretch is the answer to the reputation. A luxury hotel that spent decades as a hospital and then years empty will collect stories. Go for the Giralda tower and the pool.