Acknowledging and Preserving Our History As a Winter Garden resident, it’s important that I share my experience at the Historic Edgewater Hotel. By Austin Arthur
M
y town is Winter Garden, Florida. I chose Winter Garden as the place where I wanted to raise my family and to live out the rest of my days. My wife was born and raised here and went to school at Calvary Christian on South Dillard Street. Needless to say, we love this town and are tremendous advocates for its preservation. I believe that for our city to retain what makes it so great, we must be aware of its history, protective of its heritage, and active in its community. A couple of days ago I was reminded about an integral piece of our history and heritage here in Winter Garden – the Historic Edgewater Hotel, a bed and breakfast style inn that first opened its doors to the public in the 1920s. When I arrived at 99 W. Plant Street, Mike Lanza, the co-owner greeted me in the lobby. Behind the huge wood framed front desk was an old switchboard, a large combination safe, an antique register, and other trinkets and furniture items that are far older than I. Mike promptly invited me upstairs, which is where the guest rooms and dining area can be found. I noticed the narrow original stairwell, but he gave me the guest
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Central Florida Lifestyle | April 2022
experience by taking me upstairs via the original 1926 Otis manually operated elevator. A few years shy of being a century old, it swooshed up faster than the elevator at my current office building and was a smoother ride too. Once we arrived upstairs, I noticed the way the natural sunlight rushes through the immaculate dining room which faces Plant Street. Throughout a stay at the hotel, guests are welcome to grab coffee or other refreshments at any time. Breakfast is cooked-to-order in the morning, and all of this is included with the fixed room fee. The bedrooms are furnished with period pieces and the door doesn’t have a computer chip card, but an old-fashioned turnkey, just like it was in the early days of the hotel. After the project was halted in 1924, Jerry Chicone Sr. stepped in and found new investors which allowed the hotel to open in January 1927. The hotel thrived during its early decades, but eventually closed its doors. Then in the 1970’s, Pat Hart
bought the building and utilized it for storage and to run his TV Repair business. In the 1980’s Hart was seeking to sell the building but in the end, he kept it. “There was a lot of promises made [about restoring the building], it made the city and the people of downtown weary of people coming in to buy the building,” said Mike explaining the climate of the time. This went on until the 1990’s when Mike and his business partner Max Blanchard were looking for space to create a new studio for their media production company. They found out about this old building in the quiet downtown Winter Garden area. At that time the train was still rolling through where the West Orange Trail currently lays and Mike recounts, “there was several years there, leading up to 2003, where downtown was kind of closed off while they were doing all this work.” What Mike was
