🏨 Seminole Hotel

The Seminole Hotel was a hotel in Winter Park, Florida. The hotel opened on January 1, 1886, and had 250 guest rooms. It was situated on a site bounded by Osceola Avenue and Lake Osceola and sat at the eastern end of New England Avenue. Many people referred to it as the grand resort of Florida. At that time, wagons, carriages and bicycles were the only common modes of local transportation. The hotel operated its own street railway, the Seminole Hotel Horse-Drawn Car which ran from the South Florida Railroad station up New England Avenue, a distance of approximately ⅓ of a mile to the hotel. A slight extension down Chase/Ollie Avenue from the hotel to the Orlando and Winter Park Railroad station and dock on Lake Virginia was completed after that railroad opened. Riding the horse-drawn streetcar, hotel guests avoided the bumpy, sandy streets surrounded by posh comforts of velvet, brass and polished native and exotic hardwood finishes. Indeed, all of the streetcars manufactured by the John Stephenson Company in New York City, were state-of-the-art and on the cutting edge of urban transportation development. Many of these passengers came to Winter Park in the winter months to escape the snow and frigid temperatures of the North. In its early years, the hotel was able to attract many wealthy northerners using luxuries such as gaslights and steam heating. The hotel featured a 42 x 100 foot beautiful formal dining room, many parlors, suites with open fireplaces, a barbershop, laundry services, and a 567 foot long colonnaded porch. Guests could take the elevator to view the surrounding area from the promenade on the top of the hotel. For the guests entertainment, the hotel provided a bowling alley, a billiard hall, tennis and croquet grounds, and an orchestra for dancing. Other activities including horseback riding, fishing, and sailing on Lake Osceola in sailboats and steam yachts provided by the hotel.