The Start of a New Era

Winter Park is a suburban city located on the outskirts of Orlando in Orange County, Florida. It has a current population of 27,852 residents and is home to Rollins, College, Full Sail University, and the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art. Its areas range from open parks to residential areas to even street side shopping all along Park Avenue. It is in this eclectic town that just approximately eighty years prior, in 1934, that Robert E. Langford’s grandmother rolled up to a house at 716 Interlachen Avenue. She witnessed first hand the beautiful moss-covered oak trees of Winter Park, and stated, “This is the place.” She bought the home that August for $12,000, officially beginning the legacy of the Langford Resort Hotel.[1]
Years then passed and American involvement in World War II would begin and end as the entire state of Florida, one of the least populated states in the South, began to transform into a tropical destination.[2] Then in the early 1950s, Robert E. Langford, having been raised in the hotel business in Chicago, decided that he wanted to build a hotel in the very neighborhood that his grandmother called home. Langford realized that with the inventions of air conditioning to stifle the Florida heat and air travel to get to destinations easier than ever, Central Florida was ripe for development.[3] He immediately began purchasing property across the street from his grandmother’s house on East New England Avenue to build the one million dollar Langford Resort Hotel.
The two-hundred room luxury Langford Resort Hotel opened its doors officially in January of 1956. Along with it being Central Florida’s first air-conditioned hotel, the modern design of the Langford included the Empire Room, a famed supper club that featured nightclub acts from around the country; the Tree Tap Room, used for dances and banquets; and a seventy-five foot swimming pool surrounded by lush foliage, a petting zoo, and a variety of tropical birds.[4] This hotel quickly became the exotic escape that Florida tourists vied for and attracted numerous influential people including Ronald and Nancy Regan, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Walt Disney while he was scouting the area for a location for his theme park.
After forty-four years and countless guests, in May 2000 the Langford Resort Hotel closed its doors forever. In true Langford fashion, however, the hotel went out in style. During the hotels perfectly entitled “End Of An Era” farewell banquet, the Winter Park Mayor gave a champagne toast as everyone raised their glasses to the “glorious history of the hotel”, a glorious history that will forever play an important role in the history of Winter Park.[5]
 
 
[1] Winter Park Public Library, "Langford Hotel Collection."
[2] Christina Lane, "Forging Florida's Sun Screen," Mississippi Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2010).
[3] Gary Mormino, Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005).
[4] “Langford Hotel,” Postcard,1960, Winter Park Public Library.
[5] Winter Park Public Library, "Langford Hotel Collection."