Caption: Allison England working in the archive.
Photo by Julian Chambliss
Caption: Shady Park sit at the center of the Hannibal Square, the historic black community in Winter Park. Photo by Kelsey Von Wormer
Part of the value of working in the Rollins Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Program is the opportunity to pursue those ideas you don't have time to pursue during the regular academic year. Working with students to show them the reality of your discipline, getting into the archive, and making discoveries that reshape your thinking are all part of summer research. Allison England and I recently took a few days to burn through the Olin Library Archive and Special Collection vertical files on the Westside Winter Park. Some elements I knew, some I did not. Allison confessed, "It is a more complicate story than I thought." While you might rightly point out, she is new the material, in her defense, it was a more complicated story than what I thought also!
We have been doing some free writing, summarizing information and mapping out the story. Recently Allison wrote this:
Winter Park’s west side, Hannibal Square, was founded for African-American residents in 1881. By all accounts, West Winter Park was “a bustling, vibrant community that, in some ways, had more going for it than it does today.” It had a black-owned newspaper, The Advocate, catering to both blacks and whites, and two black men were twice elected as city aldermen. A negative image of West Winter Park has led to “a renaissance of sorts” by Winter Park, and a decision to revitalize and redevelop the community. The tracks running through Winter Park have historically stood as a dividing line between black and white, but this line has recently moved, causing some to wonder “if the rapid transformation of the area is a healthy boost or a destruction of culture.”
Everything she wrote is true, but that shift from "vibrant community" at its founding to "renaissance of sorts" is a complicated story. It also happen way before the story we are suppose to be talking about. As we discuss our finding, I was struck by how much the origin story of Winter Park is tied to the idea of two worlds, one black and one white and the homes in those two worlds. While I thought of our story as being about the meaning of the home in the city and the historical implication of the struggle to have a home, I had not thought about that meaning as one long narrative present at the foundation of the community. In the beginning Oliver Chapman and Loring Chase purchased 600 acres bordering Lakes Maitland and Osceola with the goal of creating a beautiful winter residential community for wealthy northerners. Between 1881 and 1885, they developed and advertised the new town of Winter Park located just four miles from the county seat. Chase and Chapman relied on the area’s natural beauty to entice visitors and to support the image of a community as tourist destination. Between 1882 and 1886 Chase oversaw the construction of the Seminole Hotel. Reminiscent of the coastal luxury hotels owned by Henry Flagler, the Seminole was situated on Lake Osceola and offered two hundred guest rooms and amenities that included sailing, rowing, fishing, and two steam yachts for guests. The hotel and the agricultural business developing in Central Florida required labor and African-Americans were crucial for the hotel and the groves in the area. When plotting the original town, Chase and Chapman set aside plats to the west of the rail tracks to be sold to African-Americans at a low price with the restriction that they must erect a home on the lot. Thus, the African-American labor in Winter Park, like much of the South, allowed the community to function. Yet, the sale of land and the demand to build a home, also created a vibrant community of property holding African-Americans. Indeed, the town could not have been incorporated without the support of African-American residents in Hannibal Square. Hannibal Square was the heart of the black community and residents enjoyed relative economic stability and strong community organization at a time when southern Democrats moved to redeem the South after a decade long effort to reconstruct society. The growth of Hannibal Square coincided with the emergence of Eatonville, FL (the oldest incorporate African-American community in the United States) and the two communities shared cultural and educational links. In 1887,Gus C. Henderson, the African-American owner of local general printing and publishing company rallied African-American voters to support Loring Chase’s efforts to incorporate Winter Park. Henderson, a staunch Republican urged, the sixty-four registered African-American voters to support the measure. These votes were crucial; only forty-seven white voters were registered and the total year round African-American population outnumber the total year round white population!
The measure passed and the newly incorporated town included Hannibal Square. Reflecting the importance of the black community, the election of new aldermen included African-Americans Walter B. Simpson and Frank R. Israel representing West Winter Park. Yet, like much of the south, conflict between Democrats and Republicans and wider control of the region changed the political landscape. In 1893, William Comstock and several other residents petition the Florida legislature to detach Hannibal Square from the city. Like most African-Americans, Hannibal Square residents were Republicans and Hannibal Square represented a powerful counter to Democrats' control. The Florida Legislature voted to change the city boundary, despite local opposition. While the strong economic and social links between the black and white community continued, the political link temporary came to an end. In an ironic twist, in 1925 Winter Park once again annexed Hannibal Square when city officials realized they needed a greater population base to qualify for state funding for municipal projects. Once again, African-American property owners were needed in order for the state to designate the "Town of Winter Park" as the "City of Winter Park."
The link between the black homes and white homes in Winter Park was there at the beginning. Also at the beginning is a question of fairness, access, and power. Winter Park's one time slogan of "City of Homes" is full of meaning, as we learn more, that meaning is only become more and more complex.
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