The English Court Project in Winter Park, FL

Thanks to another Nerd Night investor (more details coming soon) some lucky person or couple is going to have a beautiful NEW home in the heart of THE most desirable town in Central Florida.

Home to multi-million dollar estates, there are pockets of Winter Park going through a revitalization period that offers people geographically desirable homes at affordable prices. The #EnglishCtProject is one.

Winter Park is THE gem of Central Florida. Founded as a resort community by northern business magnates in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It's main street includes civic buildings, retail, art galleries, a private liberal arts college (Rollins), museums (including the Morse Museum full of original Tiffany's), a Central Park, a train station, a golf course country club, a historic cemetery, and a beach and boat launch.

The Winter Park area's first human residents were migrant Muscogee people who had earlier intermingled with the Choctaw and other indigenous people. In a process of ethnogenesis, the Native Americans formed a new culture which they called "Seminole", a derivative of the Mvskoke' (a Creek language) word simano-li, an adaptation of the Spanish cimarrón which means "wild" (in their case, "wild men"), or "runaway." The site was first inhabited by Europeans in 1858, It got a post office and a new name—Osceola—in 1870.

These CGI renderings show the design and potential of this home but final colors and materials will vary.

The area did not develop rapidly until 1880, when a South Florida Railroad track connecting Orlando and Sanford was laid a few miles west of Osceola. Shortly afterwards, Loring Chase came to Orange County from Chicago to recuperate from a lung disease. In his travels, he discovered the pretty group of lakes just east of the rail bed. He enlisted a wealthy New Englander, Oliver E. Chapman, and they assembled a very large tract of land, upon which they planned the town of Winter Park. Over the next four years they plotted the town, opened streets, built a town hall and a store, planted orange trees, and required all buildings to meet stylistic and architectural standards.

​In 1885, a group of businessmen started the Winter Park Company and incorporated it with the Florida Legislature; Chase and Chapman sold the town to the new company. In 1885, the Congregational Assembly of Florida started Rollins College, the state's first four-year college. The following year the Seminole Hotel on Lake Osceola opened. This was a resort complete with the luxuries of the day: gas lights, steam heating, a string orchestra, a formal dining room, a bowling alley, and long covered porches.

The first president to visit was Chester A. Arthur, who reported that Winter Park was "the prettiest place I have seen in Florida,” although he has been recorded as saying the same of nearby Sanford. ​The next president to visit the area was Franklin D. Roosevelt in March 1936. He was conferred an honorary degree in literature at Rollins College.

The following four years both hotel and the town became a fashionable winter resort for northern visitors such as the Dupont family, one of the richest families in America. Many of their descendants still live in the area, there is a Dupont Avenue and many businesses with Dupont connections, including Nemours Childrens Health System.
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In 2012, President Barack Obama visited Rollins College on August to give a speech that was part of his re-election campaign. Rollins College was recently attended by the step-son of Paul McCartney, who surprised him with an impromptu performance at his graduation party.

​Other celebrities who have been known to visit Winter Park include Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Larry King, Hugh Hefner, John Denver, Langford winter resident Lady Bird Johnson, and President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Reagan, Jimmy Buffet, Don Johnson and Fred McFeely Rogers, also known as Mister Rogers of THE neighborhood, who is an alumni of Rollins College,

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​MORE ON THIS COMING SOON.

For a viewing appointment of the project, call Richard Rutledge at Mills Park Realty: 407-256-6508