Orlando : Good 'Hoods
Gentle Strokes of Genius
By Mary Ann Simpkins
Jan 21, 2008

With billboards for amusement parks and theme restaurants cluttering the Orlando skyline, the city’s northeastern outskirts might as well be part of another continent. The adjacent city of Winter Park has been an escape for millionaires and established artists since the 1880s, with a warm, lush landscape dominated by seven large lakes that make the place feel more like a secluded retreat than a resort playground.

Art galleries are strewn between boutiques, sidewalk cafés and restaurants along brick-lined Park Avenue, creating the sort of casual elegance you’d expect to find in Zurich. The European atmosphere is enhanced by Central Park, where oak trees, flower-filled planters and meticulous green lawns stretch for nearly two blocks just north of New England Avenue.

At the nearby Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, named for the industrialist who expanded Central Park, you can relish the world’s largest collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s intricate creations. More than a century ago, Tiffany invented opalescent glass, a technique that produces a range of hues and three-dimensional effects by layering sheets of different coloured glass. In the Museum’s 19 galleries are lamps, jewellery, pottery, tableware and magnificent stained glass windows—including stunning panels of blue-flowered Wisteria vines from Tiffany’s Long Island home. The highlight is a neo-Byzantine-inspired chapel with a 10-foot by eight-foot chandelier, made for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Opposite Central Park, Timothy’s Gallery spans more offbeat pieces, and has been ranked in the Top 25 American Craft Galleries by Niche magazine. Beyond the tutu-wearing mannequin out front, you’ll find everything from handcrafted wood furniture to eye-catching pearl jewellery.

If you prefer to stop and smell the roses, visit the park’s memorial garden or relax under a canopy of old oaks. There’s art here, too—in the form of classical or jazz music sometimes played on the bandstand. Also, one of the park’s many fountains is a woman playing a harp, carved by former Art Institute of Chicago head of sculpture Albin Polasek. Another bronze-cast statue fronts Polasek’s Museum and Sculpture Garden—a wedding gift to his second wife, whom he married at age 82. “The face is hers,” says curator Karen Louden of the figure.

Polasek’s home and garden borders Lake Osceola, one of three lakes navigated on the Scenic Boat Tour that has run out of Winter Park since 1938. Spanish moss drips from trees hanging over the canals that connect the lakes, populated by otters, alligators and peacocks. It’s like sailing through a jungle—except you also learn the history behind a Northern Italian Renaissance-style house and other one-of-a-kind mansions.

Winter Park’s many preserved buildings contribute to its Old World charm. The yellow-brick structure on Park Avenue at Morse Boulevard, built in 1882, is the city’s oldest commercial building and one of 20 stops on the Historical Association’s self-guided walking tour.

    Once hungry, you can opt for anything from Texas-style barbecue to tapas. Among the many restaurants with an outdoor patio is the lauded Pannullo’s Italian Restaurant, which makes its fresh pasta daily. “They have the best wild mushroom ravioli,” says local Danielle Courtenay.

   For classical French food in a romantic atmosphere, follow the crowd to the appropriately pricey Chez Vincent, one of many popular dining spots near the new Hannibal Square Heritage Center, where oral histories and old photographs recount the area’s African-American roots.

Park Avenue ends at the white, Spanish Mediterranean-style façades of Rollins College, Florida’s oldest liberal arts school. At the campus’ Cornell Fine Arts Museum, you’ll find a wealth of interpretations of the human figure by artists from the Baroque to Postmodern periods, including Paul Cézanne’s The Large Bathers. Also on exhibit this winter are Louise Nevelson’s contemporary wood sculptures, made from cast-offs and other “found” objects that have been painted black.