John Lennon Statue in Tampa at The Barrymore Hotel

Tampa's John Lennon statue is a bronze walking figure by Cuban sculptor José Villa Soberón, titled "Lennon Walking to the Future." It stands outside the entrance of The Barrymore Hotel Tampa Riverwalk at 111 W Fortune St, across from the Straz Center. The hotel's owners bought it at auction and installed it in October 2014.

Same sculptor as Havana, different statue

Tampa's Lennon is not a cast of the Havana statue. José Villa Soberón made the seated bronze Lennon in Havana's John Lennon Park, unveiled in 2000, and a bronze copy of that bench design went to San José, Costa Rica, in 2011. The Tampa figure is a separate work with its own design. Lennon is walking, not sitting, and the sculptor titled it "Lennon Walking to the Future."

Details on the two seated versions are on the Havana and San José pages.

How it went from a Colorado garden to downtown Tampa

The statue started as a private commission. A collector in Colorado, whose name has not been published, had seen the Havana bench statue and asked Villa Soberón to make a Lennon for his garden. The sculptor didn't repeat the seated pose and designed a walking figure instead.

In 2014 the statue came up for auction. No public source explains why the collector sold it. Robinson Callen, founder of H.I. Development Corp., the company that manages The Barrymore Hotel, noticed the listing. The hotel's general manager, Larry Collier Jr., told the Tampa Tribune he loved John Lennon and backed the purchase. The winning bid came from Fortune Street Partners, which owns the hotel. The price was not disclosed.

The statue went up outside the hotel in October 2014. News coverage came later: the Tampa Tribune ran a story in March 2015, and the Associated Press picked it up nationally.

Some older write-ups get parts of this wrong. Sources don't mention a design contest, a donation or a specific day in October, so a claim that it was unveiled on 30 October 2014 has no support.

Walking to the future, or crossing Abbey Road?

The bronze shows Lennon with long hair and round glasses, wearing a sport coat. Press reports compared the walking pose to Lennon on Abbey Road, and the AP likened it to the back cover of the 1969 album. That comparison came from reporters, though. Villa Soberón called the piece "Lennon Walking to the Future."

As with the Havana statue, thieves have taken Tampa's glasses repeatedly over the years, and fans sometimes bring a pair of round glasses for their photos.

111 or 201 W Fortune St?

The statue is outside the hotel entrance on W Fortune St, facing the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, so you can walk up and see it at any hour without going inside. The Barrymore Hotel Tampa Riverwalk is an independent 14-story, 332-room hotel on the Hillsborough River, next to the Tampa Riverwalk, which makes the statue an easy stop on a Riverwalk walk. As of 2026 the hotel still runs under the same name and management, so older directions that mention the Barrymore still work.

The hotel's gated self-parking costs $20 a night, but that rate is for guests; published listings give no public parking prices nearby.

Listings don't agree on the address. Some statue listings on Yelp and Evendo use 201 W Fortune St or a 201-299 block range, which may just be a geocoded street block. The hotel itself, and the entrance the statue stands beside, is at 111 W Fortune St.