George Sebring founded his town in 1911 and built the Kenilworth Lodge, 117 rooms that were open from January to April. The rest of the time, the hotel was virtually uninhabited, Neidig said.
Sebring - When tourists look at HIghlands County and wonder, where are the historically expressive houses and buildings, Daune Neidig has the answer.
"There hasn't been any serious architecture since 1926," she told the Sebring Historical Society at a Saturday luncheon.
That doesn't mean, she explained, that beautiful houses haven't been built in Avon Park, Sebring and Lake Placid. They're just not as visually striking as the Italian Renaissance villas or even the Craftsman bungalows.
By why 1926 instead of say, 1929, when the stock market crashed? It was around 1926 when the Northern bankers realized the Florida land brokers were so dishonest, they stopped lending money, Neidig said.
Neidig, a South Florida Community College faculty member, researched Highlands County's residential and commercial buildings, and put together a Powerpoint presentation.
Starting with Avon Park, Neidig showed photographs of the first architecture: Hotel Verona, in 1887, which was called Crossbar's Folly because there was no river to attract vacationers. There was the 1897 post office, and the 1919 Brickel Building, a commercial building which is a head-shaker, Neidig sai, because people could hardly evern get to Avon Park in those days.
Even so, there were more hotels, like the Lake Byrd Lodge. If the western-style hotel looks like it must have come from somewhere else, well, it did, Neidig explained. The builders copied an inn in Yellowstone Park.
The Seaboard Airline Railroad Station came in 1926, and Avon Park's City Hall went up in 1929.
Back then, a house kit could be ordered from Sears, and 300-400 were shipped here, Neidig said. They came with lumber, shingles, roofing, millwork, flooring, plaster, lath, doors, windows, fixtures and the blueprints, and cost as little as $450.00. "All you had to do was put them together," Neidig said.
George Sebring founded his town in 1911 and built the Kenilworth Lodge, 117 rooms that were open from January to April. The rest of the time, the hotel was virtually uninhabited, Neidig said.
The Nan-Ces-O-Wee was built in 1923 as an answer to the Kenilworth, Neidig said, because it stayed open year-round for business people.
The Roanoke Hotel was built on the traffic circle in 1917, and the Buckeye Building came along in 1922. The Sebring Hotel was built in 1925.
Public utilities followed with the train station and the fire station in 1927, and the Highlands County Courthouse in 1928. With its double-hung windows and sturdy Revival lines, it's a classic, Neidig said.
The unfortunate Harder Hall, a Mission-Spanish Revival hotel, was built in 1925, as the land bubble burst, Neidig said. Back then, there were no retirees who moved to Florida, seniors retired in their native states.
DeSoto City never grew, Neidig said, "Because someone put the railroad too far east."
Archbold Biological Station was constructed in 1930-31, she said, and stopped her architectural tour of Highlands County without showing homes or buildings from Lake Placid, except the Tower and the murals. Lake Placid tended to be inhabited by tourists or part-time residents who didn't build expressive architecture, she said.
Even the Pearce-Lockett house isn't architecturally eloquent, she said, but it is historically significant.
"You are so lucky to have these treasures here. I hope you have them forever," Neidig reminded. "People don't hang around forever, but buildings do, if you take care of them."
