Florida stretches for nearly 500 miles south from the main mass of the continental US in a peninsula that is only 160 miles (or less) wide. The center third of the state is dotted with lakes, large and small, and we enter the region at the city of Lakeland, roughly halfway between the Tampa and Orlando regions.
Heading south from Zephyrhills the land away from major highways is a mix of farms and ranches. Workers are picking strawberries early this morning while the cattle are enjoying a snack.
Our first destination is Lakeland, a city of over 110,000 people nestled around a cluster of small lakes. The historic town center rises on the western shore of Mirror Lake.
The area began to see settlement in the 1870’s but the town of Lakeland wasn’t established until 1881 when a Kentucky businessman, Abraham Munn, bought 80 acres on the western side of a small lake and created a town plotted around a central plaza, Munn Park. The South Florida Railroad passed through the site in 1884 and the town of Lakeland was formally founded in 1885. The town slumbered until after the turn of the century when growth in central Florida exploded as people migrated to the area attracted by fertile land and a mild climate. The mid-1920’s were boom years for the town and by 1926 over 25,000 people called Lakeland home. Most of the small city center was constructed during the first quarter of the 1900’s, filling in the blocks between Munn Park and Lake Mirror.
The historic core is home to restaurants, bars and boutiques in brick buildings from the early 1900’s.
Three”skyscrapers” from the 1920’s dominate the city center. The Marble Arcade Building (now the Mid Florida Tower) was Lakeland’s first high rise office building when it was built in 1926.
The Hotel Lakeland Terrace was the city’s first “grand” hotel, constructed at the height of the “Florida Boom” in 1924. As part of the grand opening ceremonies, Henry Roland, aka the “Human Fly”, climbed the exterior of the hotel using just his hands and feet.
Construction of the New Florida Hotel began in 1926 but took nine years to finish as the “Florida Boom” of the early 1920’s went bust in 1926. The building wasn’t completed until 1935.
Mirror Lake is surrounded by parkland studded with sculptures. An homage to the swans that frequent Lakeland’s many lakes looks across the lake to the city center.
The aforementioned “Florida Boom” of the early 1920’s fueled tremendous growth in Lakeland. The neighborhoods that weave around multiple lakes surrounding the city center are full of homes built in a mix of period architecture (primarily Craftsman and Spanish mission styles) popular at the time. Usually in my travels period architecture is preserved in the homes of the wealthy and, while that may be true in Lakeland as well, these neighborhoods were not the elite neighborhoods at the time. These are working class neighborhoods from the early 1920’s (and there are a lot of them, these pictures are just from one of Lakeland’s many historic neighborhoods.)
This particularly neighborhood wraps around Lake Morton south of the city center.
The reason that I cruised the Lake Morton neighborhood is that it was on the way to my real goal for visiting Lakeland, Florida Southern College. Florida Southern is a small private college that currently serves around 3,000 students on a campus of low rolling hills in Lakeland. Why, you might ask, have I sought it out? The answer is easy, as a life-long fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, how could I pass up the world’s largest single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture?
Florida Southern College
Florida Southern is the oldest four-year private college in Florida, sponsored by the United Methodist Church and founded in Orlando in 1883. The college moved to various sites until settling permanently in Lakeland in 1922. In 1936 Ludd M. Spivey, president of the college, approached Frank Lloyd Wright with the idea of building a “college of tomorrow” out of the orange groves currently covering most of the college campus with the goal of attracting more students during the Great Depression. Frank Lloyd Wright was 69 years old when he began his work at Florida Southern. The upper level of the Wright portion of the campus centers around the Water Dome, a water feature in front of the Roux Library. Standing under the red awning of the library, I look down across the Water Dome and down a slight slope to the most celebrated building on campus, the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel.
Students assisted construction workers in building the chapel, which was the first Wright building constructed on the campus. Today the chapel rises in elegant planes and angles above the hillside.
Roughly distributed around the grassy slope between the Roux Library and the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, various Wright-designed classroom buildings rise from the green lawns, connected with low covered walkways.
The covered walkways have very low ceilings. I didn’t think that people were that much shorter back then, but this 6 feet tall guy had to duck!
A closer view shows the level of linear detail that Wright is known for, even a compass embedded in the plaza illustrates the distinctive Frank Lloyd Wright style.
Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959 but his legacy lives on in the inspiration and actual plans left for future generations. In 2014 the Usonian House was built from plans that Wright left for his “home of the future.”
What a great day for a Frank Lloyd Wright fan! My journey south through lake country continues to the city of Bartow about 12 miles southeast of Lakeland.
Bartow
Bartow is much smaller than Lakeland with a current population of around 20,000 but actually was founded more than 30 years earlier and played a more important part in the early history of the area. Fort Blount was founded in the area in 1851 and a small village grew up, serving the ranchers of the area. During the Civil War Bartow was an important shipping point for food going north as the Union blockade of Florida’s east and west coasts made land transportation the only available option. In 1862 a county courthouse, school and two churches were built and the town was named Bartow in honor of Francis Bartow, the first Confederate brigade commander killed during the Civil War. Railroads reached the area in the mid-1880’s and Bartow again assumed an important role in provisioning the military, this time for troops fighting in Cuba in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The gleaming silver cupola of the 1908 Polk County Courthouse, now a historical center, dominates the small downtown historic district.
South of Bartow the country becomes more rural, growing the three things that dominate the economy of the area: oranges, cattle and retirees.
Just outside of the little town of Avon Park is a local institution, the Maxwell Groves Country Store.
Maxwell Groves Country Store
Thomas and Leona Maxwell settled in the area in 1928 as caretakers for the absentee owners of some orange groves. In 1935 they built a business to provide fresh citrus to locals and fruit stands. Over the years the business grew into a country store and fruit packing house. The store is now a “must-stop” for tourists looking to sit in the iconic orange rocking chairs on the front porch.
Inside the store sells a selection of local products as well as the famous fresh orange juice, squeezed on site.
This is definitely “orange land” and as we continue south to Sebring orange groves blanket the landscape in all directions.
Our next stop is Sebring, a planned community on the eastern shore of Lake Jackson.
Sebring
Sebring was founded in 1912 by an Ohio pottery manufacturer, George Sebring, who designed the city as a “circle” with streets radiating out from a central traffic circle. The town grew rapidly during the early 1920’s “Florida Boom.” In the era before interstates, Hwy 98 and 27 were major arteries down the spine of Florida but passed Sebring by on the west side of Lake Jackson, sparing it from the “strip development”. However, strip development did occur, just along the highways on the west side of the lake so downtown Sebring slumbers around the circular park in the center of the small village center.
In contrast to the bucolic village center, a couple of miles outside of town a whirlwind of thrills and excitement erupts from the grounds of an old airfield. This is the home of the world-renowned Sebring International Raceway.
Sebring International Raceway
Sebring is one of the oldest continuously operating racetracks in the US, having hosted its’ first race in 1950. The crown jewel of the races offered at Sebring is the “12 Hours of Sebring” endurance race, created as the US version of the European “24 Hours of Le Mans.” The racetrack, with all of its’ turns and twists, is very flat so it was challenging to try and get some pictures. It was also in use as practice takes place nearly every day there is not a race.
Unlike the Watkins Glen Nascar track inn Watkins Glen, NY, where I was able to drive the Lunch Box around the track (see Vol. 11, Chap.16), I was not able to access the racetrack here at Sebring. In fact, the only part that I could go in was the gift shop (go figure…)
Fun, none the less! South of Sebring the orange groves and retirement developments continue to unfold all around.
The village of Lake Placid is home to many of the workers from the surrounding orange groves and a attempt to decorate another rather mundane small town has shown great success. Over 40 murals celebrating community and nature bring life to the town center. Turning off the highway I head into the village center.
The murals are everywhere.
Alas, the goal of my visit to Lake Placid is closed for the day. I can only gaze longingly out my window at the American Clown Museum and School.
Continuing south the orange groves give way to scrub and trees as I pass a traffic sign that I have repeatedly seen in rural Florida since Apalachicola. Warnings to be looking out for bears! Who knew Florida is overrun with bears? At the rv park outside of Apalachicola bears are such a problem that one can only put garbage in the dumpsters between 8am-5pm. Dumpsters are emptied and locked at 5pm in order to prevent garbage from attracting bears during the night. Who knew?
Wildlife seems to be the topic of the moment…
Next up: Gators!
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