03/22/2024
Be sure to check out our upcoming Food Tours, featuring beautiful, historic destinations such as the Edgewater Hotel!
The Edgewater Hotel was completed in 1926 and opened for business in 1927 with 53 guest rooms. Fishermen, traveling to Winter Garden from various destinations across the country, were its first and primary guests.
Lake Apopka Hotels Inc. was formed with $120,000 in capital funds invested by local businessmen J.D. McMillan, Harry E. Bumby, J.M. Lazenby, William F. Cappleman, PH. Britt and N.A. Perry in 1924. In the following year, construction began with original plans detailing the construction of a four-story structure. Later in 1924, the builder, Jerry Ahern, became bankrupt with only the first-floor shell finished, and construction quickly came to a sudden halt. In 1925, Jerry J. Chicone, who had a real estate office across the street, was trying to sell Winter Garden property to out-of-state clients who wanted to know why the hotel remained unfinished. He formed a group of investors who financed the completion. Upon opening, rooms were rented for only $2 to $2.50 a night- unheard of nowadays. The hotel included all the modern conveniences of that time: an elevator, telephones in each room with a switchboard operator downstairs, steam heat controls in each room, adjoining bathrooms, up-to-date plumbing and fire sprinklers throughout the facility.
The Edgewater Hotel closed its doors in 1968 and lay dormant for approximately 25 years. When city officials began talking about tearing the building down to build a parking lot, concerned citizens formed the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation in hopes to purchase and restore this building historically significant to our community’s past. Intervention by the Heritage Foundation became unnecessary when Max Blanchard and Mike Lanza bought the building for restoration in 1995. Eight years after the purchase, the hotel reopened as a bed-and-breakfast complete with shops and restaurants, now featured as stops on WGHF’s Winter Garden Heritage Food Tours.
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We have perfectly combined our love for Winter Garden and our obsession with food.
