SO, WHY PEACOCKS?

Jeannette Genius McKean and her feathered friends.

How come a peacock adorns the City of Winter Park’s logo? And why do the noisy creatures roam around some of the city‘s priciest neighborhoods? It all goes back to Hugh F. McKean (1908-1995) and Jeannette Genius McKean (1909-1989).

Hugh — artist, educator, collector and writer — was the 10th president of Rollins College, serving from 1951 through 1969. He then became the college’s chancellor and chairman of its board of trustees. In 1945, while still an art professor at the college, he married Jeannette, granddaughter of Charles Hosmer Morse, the Chicago industrialist and philanthropist who helped to shape modern Winter Park.

Both McKeans were lovers of nature and cultivated a preserve filled with peacocks around Wind Song, the lakefront estate that Jeannette inherited from her father, Richard Genius. Genius Drive, the dirt road leading through the preserve and to the estate, was open to the public until the 1990s.

The property, now owned by the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation and dubbed the Genius Preserve, encompasses the city’s largest remaining orange grove and several structures, including the unoccupied but carefully maintained family home.

And it’s still bustling with preening peafowl descended from those the McKeans unleashed in 1950. In 2004, Winter Park officially adopted the peacock as its symbol, along with the tagline “The City of Culture and Heritage.” n

COURTESY (JEANNETTE MCKEAN) OF THE ROLLINS COLLEGE ARCHIVES PHOTO (PEACOCK) BY WINTER PARK PICTURES/WINTERPARKPICTURES.COM