Plant & Main Street

Downtown Winter Garden looks freshly-minted in this ca.1913 photograph of Main Street, aptly named, as both the Atlantic Coast Line and Tavares and Gulf train depots and many of the town’s businesses fronted the road. In this photograph, taken from the intersection of Main and Plant Streets, the sturdy new Bank of Winter Garden (1908-1929) and the Dillard and Boyd building occupy corner sites. Dillard, with his partner Benjamin Boyd, constructed the building on the right in 1912. It stands where Arthur Bullard Newton’s dry goods store was once located, in a two story wooden building that burned in the 1909 fire. Over the years, the brick building housed Dillard’s real estate office, a bakery, a theatre, a barbershop, a pharmacy, and a department store, and also featured a series of upstairs rented rooms. In its current reincarnation as the Bond Building, the venerable structure at 12 West Plant Street is now home to Winter Garden Yoga and Seeds Natural Market. The South Apopka Supply Company and another brick building can be seen further south on Main Street. the building in the distance is today’s West Orange Glass and Mirror.

In the busy intersection of Plant and Main Streets sometime in late winter 1912, Winter Garden residents stand proudly by their automobiles, a dog rests in the shadows of A.W. Hurley’s car, and Fred Roper enjoys the shade on the porch of Mr. Strozier’s store at the far left. Soon after the photo was taken, the fire of Tuesday, March 12th destroyed the wooden Strozier store. The Orange Hotel, Dodd’s store, and several other wooden buildings were also lost in the blaze. The Dillard and Boyd building, the South Apopka Supply Company, and the Bank of Winter Garden were slightly damaged. The two-story Dillard and Boyd building was very new, having not yet been expanded to the west. The drugstore on the first floor displays a sign for the national company Lowney’s Chocolates.