Public gets first look at historic Gardner House

LAKE ALFRED — A new historical venue was unveiled to the public Friday as the city of Lake Alfred allowed locals and residents to view the Gardner House.

The City Commission voted to buy the house in July 2017 for $225,000. It had hoped for Historic Preservation Grants to purchase the home but they were cut by the state that fiscal year. The city had already put a non-refundable $15,000 deposit toward the purchase.

“We’re trying to preserve our history,” Mayor Charlie Lake said. “Knowing someone could come in and knock it down, we almost had to buy it. This house belonged to the guy who basically started Lake Alfred.”

According to Connie White, president of the Lake Alfred Historical Society, Frank Gardner was originally from Fargo, North Dakota, and spent his winters in Daytona Beach. During a bad winter that devastated Gardner’s citrus crops, he and several other men began traveling across the state and found Lake Alfred — then Chubb — and noticed that the devastation to the citrus wasn’t nearly as bad.

“This is a major, major deal, especially to me,” White said of the city’s acquisition of the home. “We think of the Gardner family as our founding fathers. He’s really the one that got Lake Alfred to where it is today.”

White said Gardner built his first home in what’s currently Lake Alfred in 1911, but that house was later moved. Disparities in current records indicate that the recently purchased Gardner House was built in either 1913 or 1915. The city also acquired a cottage next door that served as Gardner’s “Florida Fruitlands Company.”

“On that piece of property, we actually have two historical sites — the Gardner House and the original Florida Fruitlands Company,” White said. “The possibilities are endless and I’m just glad we have a city manager and City Commission with the foresight to recognize that.”

City Manager Ryan Leavengood said the building is far from ready for regular use, but the city has finished some minor renovations to the house’s porch, landscaping and electrical fixtures. Leavengood said the city will continue to pursue grant funding for renovations. What the building is used for, he said, is still to be determined but could be used for meeting space for an entity like a homeowner’s association board.

“We can see this being similar to the Baynard House in Auburndale,” Leavengood said. “I can see us trying to incorporate it into other events like our Christmas parade. The predominant goal was to preserve the house.”

Leavengood said he envisions the property being fully operational by the 2020-21 or 2021-22 fiscal years. An engineering firm estimated that the total amount needed for full rehabilitation is $600,000 — a number the city manager considers more of a maximum total.

“I’ve already had people ask about renting it out,” Lake said. “We have Mackay on one side of the city and now Gardner on the other. We don’t really have a historic district, but in a way, the entire city is a historic district.”

White said while going through old storage, a journal was found that belonged to Gardner’s wife, June Gardner. Inside the journal was a makeshift book registry, White said, indicating that she likely ran a library out of her home.

“In this book is the names of Lake Alfred residents at the time,” she said. “That’s just a neat little artifact for us to find. Mr. and Mrs. Gardner lived here until they died in the 1960s. They were truly pillars of this community.”