Winter Garden history center begins to take shape downtown
More than halfway to its fundraising goal of nearly $1.3 million, the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation plans to begin construction next month on a new history research and education center to keep the former citrus town’s self-described “juicy past” alive.
The nonprofit foundation, which helped rescue the Edgewater Hotel and restored the Garden Theatre in downtown Winter Garden, will build a 5,000- square-foot building on East Plant Street that will double as a visitor center, providing information to West Orange Trail users and other guests.
Foundation staff, who operate a museumof local history and a railroad museum downtown, have taught history lessons to an estimated 20,000 schoolchildren in the past three years, though visiting field trips often assemble elsewhere because the foundation lacks meeting space.
“We’ve had to borrow the Baptist church, the city’s old firehouse, the hotel lobby,” said Ward Britt, a member of the foundation’s board for 15 years and a third-generation resident of Winter Garden. “We always had a great deal of interesting history to tell, but no place to tell it.”
The foundation, established in 1994, acquired the land for the new center in December 2011 for $99,000 from the First Baptist Church, its neighbor to the east, Orange County property records show. The site is adjacent to a yellow caboose, a favorite photo spot for Winter Garden visitors.
Kay Cappleman, the foundation’s executive director, said the building also will provide a climate-controlled area for a collection of photographs, letters, documents and other artifacts that tell the stories of railroads, citrus and 20th-century life in west Orange County and Winter Garden.
The artifacts are currently housed in a former warehouse that once stored fertilizer.
Supporters have raised about $750,000 through private donations and pledges, including a $250,000 award from Orange County Arts and Cultural Affairs.