Genuine Florida

Here’s an image from a brochure for the City of Winter Park. It’s the center area of the Winter Park Mall sometime around the late ’60s.  The Mall was anchored by Ivey’s and J.C.Penny’s. Other stores in the mall were Walgreen’s, McCrory’s, Bill Baer TV, The Mall News, Lillie Rubin, etc. The mall slowly lost it’s stores and closed in the ’90s. It was demolished not long after to make way for ‘Winter Park Village’, what I call the mploded-mall-concept.

About Lillie Rubin: Another Florida native store that started on Miami Beach. The store was in most major malls across Florida and across the U.S. The concept was aimed at the more affluent and those that wished to be more dressy. The overly casual style that has become the norm for most Americans crushed business for the likes of Lillie Rubin. Other companies bought and sold the chain until the store was phased out completely in 2006.

The huge fountain in Winter Park Mall was very refreshing to walk near after entering the mall from the heat, as a soft spray of coolness came from it. In this photo the fountain shows the wooden barrier with small plants in it. Years later the wooden barrier was replaced with an open stone bottom. For sometime plant life was a part of Winter Park Mall’s decor. Most of this was gone by the mid-80s.

To the left is a corridor vendor that I believe called iteself the ‘Artists Cabinet’, where various prints and paitings were sold. I don’t believe this vendor was still around by the mid-70s.

Here is Swampy at the Webster Flea Market, one of the largest flea markets in the Southeast.

Here’s a great brochure from the 1950s for the Naples Beach Hotel.

Here’s the ‘Driftwood Grill’ sign, as the restaurant is now called.
The neon sign is on the main drag as you spin through Williston.

A tradition for some 60 years, Dairy Belle still thrives as the best place in Riviera Beach for soft serve ice cream. It’s in a dicey neighborhood as so many other soft serve spots are in the state (Little Dairy Manor in Altamonte Springs and Goff’s in Orlando). However, the owner diligently provides a great product and great service that has them coming over from miles around. The fellows at the window above had been out in the Atlantic all day. They hit dry land and headed to the Dairy Belle.

Erstwhile Swampy stops at one the more fascinating architectural wonders in Florida, Top of the World, in Clearwater. The dozens of condo buildings throughout the sprawling property each has a unique construction. Each building has a location name as do the streets.

Just past the guard is the world as above. Beyond the world are the senior adult only community that is stuffed with amenities.

Probably the greatest of which is the construction of the multi-family homes. Built in 1947, these structures are pure concrete block and built for permanence. There’s probably not a hurricane that can come to disturb these buildings.

One of my fondest childhood memories was spending my hard-earned pennies on buying sea shells at the Silver Springs Shell Shop, an iconic gift shop across from the Sun Plaza Motel in Silver Springs. They had everything, from conchs to cowries to tiny jingle shells and shark’s teeth. Like most gift shops of the day, they also sold goofy trinkets like coconuts carved to look like monkey heads, tacky t-shirts, big beach towels, and stickers.

Alas, the Shell Shop is no more. For reasons known only to themselves, Florida DOT decided several years ago that they needed to plow it down to widen an intersection. Well, here it is two summers later, and they’ve yet to build the intersection, and the land stands empty. Why they couldn’t have left this perennial tourist icon alone is a mystery to me. And so it goes into the file of memories of places that aren’t there anymore. That’s me, buying a beach towel, on one of the last days the store was open in 2006.

It’s Florida’s tallest lighthouse. Completed in 1887, this beacon over Ponce Inlet soars 175 feet high, tapering to just 12 feet at the top. And if you’ve got vertigo … this isn’t the place to go. Take a tour through our photo gallery and read the rest of the story….

Gatorland in Orange County has gone through many changes over the years. One is above. That is the entire facility circa 1961 along South Orange Blossom Trail. Today it is more than three times as large. Another is that the admission was a donation in 1961. Today there is a charge and you get a ton more for your money.

Gatorland seems not to have faltered as an attraction,  as most of Florida’s other mid-size attractions have dealt with to one degree or the other. It has maintained itself and the business has stayed in the family, a trait that long standing healthy businesses can be traced back to.

I never met Gatorland’s creator, Owen Godwin. Learn more about him and Gatorland by clicking here. I did have many opportunities to talk to his brother Charlie and his wife. Charlie shared many stories of Gatorland. He and his wife were great folks.

Lakeland has a literal open-air museum of wonderful signs. Here’s another: Dick’s Auto Sales. Started in 1945, the dealership now sells used cars. There are quite a few signs on this area of Main Street alone to see. They will slowly appear here.