DEL.ICIO.USAJC TRAVEL NEWS
Winter Park retains old-Florida elegance
For The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Winter Park, Fla. — Quietly and with anticipation, we entered the small, narrow waterway bordered by a profusion of subtropical palms, trees and shrubs, gliding into a hidden world.
JACK HORAN / AJC Special
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art displays the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany in Winter Park.
JACK HORAN / AJC Special
Sidewalk cafés beckon pedestrians on tree-shaded streets in downtown Winter Park. It’s a charming contrast to busy Orlando a few miles away.
JACK HORAN / AJC Special
The architecture of the Knowles Memorial Chapel at Rollins College – Florida’s oldest college – recalls the state’s Spanish roots.
JACK HORAN / AJC Special
Skipper Frazier Vail guides his tour boat down a narrow canal framed by lush scenery in Winter Park, Fla. The natural wonders and lovely old buildings – plus his narration of the town’s history – take visitors back to a gentler time.
JACK HORAN / AJC Special
Scenic Boat Tour boat takes sight-seers through the Fern Canal between lakes Virginia and Osceola in Winter Park.
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The 14 passengers in the pontoon boat craned their necks, looking side to side. But this wasn’t the famous Jungle Cruise at Walt Disney World. No robotic animals sprang into action.
Instead, our luxuriant waterway was the real thing, far from the madding crowds at the theme park. We were taking a guided tour of three Winter Park lakes linked by two canals, and our boat had just entered the Venetian Canal. The slightly zigzagging canal was so narrow — 9 1/2 to 12 feet — that the boat frequently bumped the wooden bulkhead as we slipped under moss-draped live oaks, sabal palms and thickets of bamboo and banana trees.
Wedged in higgledy-piggledy beside the canal were small boathouses. We peered into neatly groomed backyards, wistfully wondering who lived there. An arched bridge over the canal could be called the Bridge of Sighs from our companions’ exclamations about the lush scenery.
An upscale city of 30,000 next to Orlando, Winter Park is a relaxed, stroll-about destination that’s a counterpoint to Orlando’s glitzy attractions. Shops, boutiques and restaurants line the undulating brick streets. Patrons can dine at sidewalk tables. Baskets of ferns and coral-hued impatiens hang from second-story balconies.
The Tiffany name adds luster to the city. The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art displays the world’s most comprehensive collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). The collection includes stained-glass windows, lamps, jewelry and paintings. It’s one of six musems within walking distance from the six blocks of stores and restaurants.
The canals, opulent homes and museums lend the city a European aura. And, as in European cities, the train stops in the middle of town, not on the seedy outskirts. The Amtrak station is a block from Park Avenue, the main drag, and the Park Plaza Hotel, the lone downtown hotel.
Winter Park developed in the 1880s as a citrus-growing center. It became a wintering retreat for wealthy Northerners, an inland Palm Beach. In 1885, the Congregational Church established Florida’s first institute of higher learning, Rollins College. Among its students was actor Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in the 1960 film “Psycho.” And Rollins grad Donald Cram won a 1987 Nobel Prize for chemistry.
Skippers operating the pontoon boats for the Scenic Boat Tour, which began in 1938, narrate historic highlights of Winter Park.
As we left the dock on Lake Osceola, our skipper, Frazier Vail, a Winter Park resident since 1952, told us the three lakes still hold otters and alligators. We saw neither, but cormorants and sea gulls wheeled overhead on occasion.
We went by the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens, which showcases dozens of classical sculptures by the late Czech-American sculptor, and the former home of Harry Sinclair, founder of Sinclair Oil (whose logo is the green dinosaur). As we left Lake Osceola and plied the Fern Canal, we passed close enough to a man fishing from the bank to shake his hand.
Next, on Lake Virginia, we turned our attention to more elegant houses and a 200-foot-long canal that goes to Lake Mizell. Vail said loggers dug the canals in the 1880s to float timber from one lake to another. We circled the lake as Vail pointed to the steeple of Knowles Memorial Chapel, the tallest feature on the Rollins campus, striking for its Spanish-Mediterranean architecture and red-tile roofs.
Back through the Fern Canal to Lake Osceola. Florida boathouse design may have reached its pinnacle here. One boathouse has a fireplace and chimney. Another, built in 1898, is crowned with a white balustrade with boat garages on both sides. That boathouse and an accompanying three-story mansion were listed for sale on the Internet at $8.5 million.
At the opposite shore of Osceola, the verdant, 0.7-mile-long Venetian canal connects the lake with Lake Maitland. Maitland’s shoreline reveals more stately manors, a private bridge to the Isle of Sicily and its multimillion-dollar homes and the 11-acre Kraft Azalea Gardens.
Lake Maitland has hosted various celebrities. Vail pointed out the former Alabama Hotel, where Margaret Mitchell stayed after writing “Gone With the Wind.” The hotel, built in 1922, went condo in 1979. In that colonial-style house, Vail said, nodding to the lakeshore, another Georgia author, World War II ace Robert Scott, wrote “God Is My Co-Pilot.” The largest house on the lake, 22,000 square feet, was once owned by retired NBA star Horace Grant, who played for the Orlando Magic.
For those who would like to combine scenic boat tours with sidewalk art displays, next weekend would be the time to visit. The 50th annual Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival (www.wpsaf.org) will be Friday through Sunday in Central Park along Park Avenue. An estimated 350,000 patrons are expected to view the work of 1,200 artists. The event is one of the nation’s oldest and largest juried art festivals in categories that include clay, drawing and graphics, glass, jewelry, painting, photography, sculpture and watercolor.
