PRESERVING OUR HISTORY

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

My 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 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

referring to is the revitalization efforts done in preparation for the city’s centennial celebration, where “Centennial Plaza” was created which now holds the famous clock tower and fountain.

In 1995 Mike and Max bought the Edgewater Hotel building. Just before this time, the newly formed Winter Garden Heritage Foundation successfully stopped what was to be the demolition of the building. As part of the purchase agreement with Hart, they had to sign an agreement with the Heritage Foundation. “We signed a contract with the Heritage Foundation so that we would maintain the historic exterior of the building,” Mike explained.

However the interior was not going to be preserved. That was until the community started to meet with Mike and Max. “In the 1990s we met a lot of the original families who were here. We met with Bert Roper, the Reeves, Jerry Chicone Sr., Ann and Bob Ellis … we got so many stories of what it was like to be here and it just kind of triggered us to think that you could take this building which is an authentic historical structure, with such a great background and stories, and return it to what it had been in the 1920s and 1930s and give people of our time that experience,” recounted Mike.

“It was at that point we started a new business and the production business faded out,” said Mike.

Mike and Max began the painstaking process of revitalization efforts that would go on for 8 years before they were able to welcome their first hotel guests in 2003. Just in time for the cities 100-year anniversary. The rest is history.

The hotel today is booming, maybe just as much as it was in the 1920’s. In addition to the hotel itself it is home to Earl Brigham's Barber Shop, Chef’s Table and the Tasting Room, Thai Blossom Restaurant, and Scoops Old Fashioned Ice Cream Store, all of which have been downstairs since 2008 and have outstanding records of their own in our community.

As Mike concluded regarding the historic preservation of the hotel, “We are able to honor the families who built this city instead of wiping that history out, we bring it back and honor it.”

I learned a lot with my visit to the hotel. I learned that there are people like Mike and Max in our community who are passionate about honoring our history and heritage. Walking down the halls of that hotel I thought of the men and women who also stepped on those floors so many decades ago. These are the people who helped to pioneer our wonderful community, not just Winter Garden but all of West Orange. It is for us to honor them and care about what made this city and area great, to know and preserve our history and heritage. In the end, it’s about the people.

Austin Arthur is a local business owner and community advocate for West Orange County, Florida. He has been writing about, and advocating for, West Orange County for some time and is active on many boards and other community groups. Austin and his wife, Kellie, are residents of Winter Garden, where they are raising their three children. www.austinarthur.us