Historic Edgewater Hotel turns 90

Ninety years ago this week, the three-story Edgewater Hotel opened its doors to accommodate fishermen who were coming to Winter Garden from all over the country to throw their lines into the famous Lake Apopka and snag a bass. Room rentals were about $2.

On the first floor, the Evergreen Restaurant served traditional Southern meals — 25 cents for breakfast and up to $1.50 for a special dinner.

Construction actually began in 1924, and plans called for a four-story building, but the land bust of the mid-1920s brought the project to a halt after the first floor shell was completed.

In 1925, Jerry Chicone Sr. found a group of investors to finish the building with three stories. It was completed with 53 rooms: six private guest rooms, 23 two-room suites and a sitting room on the second floor that overlooked downtown.

The Edgewater Hotel opened Jan. 26, 1927, with Ralph Hartman as manager. It boasted a dining room, dessert room, barbershop, beauty parlor, telegraph office and drug store.

Modern conveniences of the time included a manually operated Otis elevator, telephones in each room with a switchboard operator downstairs, individual room temperature monitoring, up-to-date plumbing and fire sprinklers.

The builder wanted natural light throughout the hotel, so four skylights were installed in the lobby and the second and third floors were built around the skylights.

Lake Apopka was billed as “the most dependable bass fishing lake in the world,” garnering national attention and attracting prominent businessmen, celebrities and vacationers. Hotel employees would go to the roof and survey the lake for fishing guests and tell them what area of the lake they would be visiting that day. The hotel owned 20 rowboats and a houseboat.

During World War II, the hotel housed troops on their way overseas; the Washington Senators baseball team stayed there during its spring training season in the 1940s and ’50s. When Walt Disney World was under construction, project workers were among the last to stay at the Edgewater.

According to the rumors, actors Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart had rooms in the hotel, and a number of commercials, television shows and movies have been filmed there.

There was very little activity after 1968, and the building became an eyesore in the downtown.

In 1995, Mike Lanza and Max Blanchard formed The Edgewater Hotel Inc. and began an extensive historic restoration of the property. Five years later, the Choctaw Willy’s restaurant opened. Today, the hotel features an antique barbershop, an ice-cream shop and three restaurants.

The upper floors were reopened to guests in 2003, and the hotel operates as a bed-and-breakfast-style inn. Modern amenities, such as air-conditioning, Wi-Fi and cable television, were added as unobtrusively as possible.

FORMER HOTEL MANAGER VISITS EDGEWATER

In 1948, Gordon Dickerson drove from Texas to Winter Garden to assume management duties for the Edgewater Hotel. Dickerson had served three years in the military and been promoted to staff sergeant when he was assigned to a camp that received German prisoners of war during World War II.

He moved to Texas following the war. He had received a letter from his cousin that the owner of the Edgewater, Dr. Clinton H. Whitehurst, was looking for someone to manage the hotel. Whitehurst had owned the Edgewater for three years when Dickerson took him up on his offer.

Whitehurst, according to Dickerson, was a resident of Massachusetts when he responded to an ad that stated the Edgewater Hotel in Winter Garden was for sale. The doctor had long wished to move to Florida, and the Edgewater gave him that opportunity. Whitehurst also opened the West Orange Medical Clinic a block behind the hotel.

During Dickerson’s tenure at the hotel, he helped hire the restaurant’s manager, took care of the guests and helped get their luggage upstairs. He even took shifts operating the Edgewater’s telephone switchboard behind the front desk.

“I don’t think many realized there would be such a nice hotel in a small town,” Dickerson remembers.

One of his fondest memories was being at the hotel during the period the Washington Senators used the Edgewater as their quarters during their spring training.

“The people in town were excited they were here, and they made friends with a number of the players. I enjoyed it along with them, too.”

In 1948, Winter Garden wasn’t quite the bustling center that it is today, and the city “pretty well went to bed after dark,” Dickerson said.

“People were very happy. It was soon after World War II,” he said. “It was a good era for Winter Garden. It was a good time for the business people. They all were enthusiastic that things would grow after the recovery from World War II.”

The trip to Winter Garden changed Dickerson’s life in many ways. He met his wife, who was visiting friends in Lake Butler, and began a lifelong love story that continues to this day. Dr. Whitehurst became a mentor to the young Dickerson, and after his short career in hotel management, he was introduced to his life’s work as a laboratory and X-ray technician.

Whitehurst and his wife, Elizabeth, owned the hotel until 1951.

AMONG BEST PLACES TO STAY

The online review site, Hotel Scoop, has chosen the Edgewater Hotel in Winter Garden in its year-end “best of the best” for 2016.

The contributors of Hotel Scoop collectively review more than 200 hotels and resorts within a year.

“To be placed among these 10 very distinguished and elegant establishments located all over the world is quite an honor for us,” the hotel’s owners said.

Other “Best Places” recipients include The Venetian Resort in Turks & Caicos, the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem, the Shangri-La Hotel in Tokyo and the Inn at Bay Fortune.

“It became our goal to honor the unique and distinguished history of the hotel and the town by doing a faithful historic restoration of the building to recreate the experiences of those guests visiting a fledgling Winter Garden in the 1920s and ’30s,” owner Michael Lanza said.

The hotel has gathered the many positive guest reviews online from sites such as Tripadvisor.com, Google and Hotels.com. Thousands of guests from all over the world have been introduced to the Edgewater and the city of Winter Garden since the building reopened its doors to visitors. Hotel Scoop’s in-depth account of the Edgewater experience describes the hotel’s personal hospitality through its made-to-order breakfasts, the multitude of refreshments available to guests in its sitting room, the varied interactions one could have with travelers from all over the world (or right next door) and the diverse offerings of Winter Garden right outside the hotel’s doors.

Contact Amy Quesinberry at [email protected].