It’s a year to celebrate votes and City Beautiful scenes
As the days go by and one year follows another, it’s been my experience that the older I get, the faster time seems to pass. So here we are in 2019, and I’m happy to mark the zoom of the weeks and months on my big new calendar, courtesy of Orlando’s Historic Preservation Board. It’s been a gift to the city since 1991.
This year’s theme celebrates Orlando efforts to create a “City Beautiful.” For more than a century, city leaders have passed ordinances and made plans to protect and preserve Orlando’s natural beauty as well as its historic structures. Such planned landscapes and streetscapes enhance the beauty of a city and also add character, create recreational value, and increase the safety of residents, as copy on the back of the calendar notes.
In keeping with the theme, the 2019 calendar showcases landscape features including Orlando’s tabebuia trees, planted in the 1940s and 1960s; historic parks such as Dickson-Azalea Park on East Washington Street and Ivanhoe Plaza Park at 510 Shady Lane Drive; the historic neighborhood gates at Orwin Manor and at Lancaster Drive; and Dubsdread Golf Course.
Orlando’s association with the name “City Beautiful” began in 1908, when city leaders sponsored a contest to select a new motto to replace the “Phenomenal City,” the favorite from the 1880s, when the city’s population mushroomed.
Mrs. W. S. Branch won the 1908 contest with her suggestion, “The City Beautiful” — a motto also adopted later by Coral Gables and by cities beyond Florida, from tiny Storm Lake, Iowa, to Kansas City, Mo.
The term was quite popular around the turn of the 20th century, thanks to the “City Beautiful” urban-planning movement that influenced many cities, including Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and Denver.
Votes for women — before 1920
Just as 2019 marks 110 years since Orlando officially became beautiful, the year is ripe with other anniversaries, too, including the 80th birthday of the League of Women Voters of Orange County, founded in May 2019.
In a time when a record number of women are heading to Congress, it’s worth remembering that a century ago some folks didn’t think women were up to the responsibility of voting. “The masculine represents judgment . . . while the feminine represents emotion,” one critic of votes for women, O.B. Frothingham, wrote. “The predominance of sentiment in women renders her essentially an idealist . . . . She jumps at conclusions.”
Indeed, even the idea of higher education or vigorous outdoor activity for girls was then considered controversial in some circles.
Women voted in Orlando in 1919, though — even before Congress passed the 19th Amendment on June 4 that year and the amendment was ratified by the states in August 1920.
In 1919, Mayor James Giles authorized a bill entitling Orlando’s women to vote in municipal elections, and on May 21, 1919, they exercised their first voting rights by approving a $300,000 bond issue for street paving — part of the push to create the City Beautiful that’s celebrated in glorious blackand-white images in this year’s Historic Preservation Board calendar.
To learn more
Copies of the 2019 Orlando Historic Preservation Board calendar are available at Orlando City Hall, 400 S. Orange Ave., and the Orange County Regional History Center, 65 E. Central Blvd., in downtown Orlando. At City Hall, copies should be available at the second-floor security desk or by the sixth-floor reception desk.
The city’s free guided Downtown Orlando Historic Walking Tours offer another great way to learn about historic architecture. The 90-minute tours (9:30 to 11 a.m.) take place on the first Friday of the month from October to May (next: Feb. 1). Tours begin at the Rogers Kiene Building, 39 S. Magnolia Ave., Orlando 32801. Details and reservations: Rose Garlick, 407246-3789. Special tour groups may be available upon request; contact Richard Forbes, Orlando’s historic preservation officer, at 407-246-3350. For more on Orlando preservation programs, visit cityoforlando.net/cityplanning/historic-preservation.