40 Years of the Parliament House
Orlando (Fla.)
Hotels--Florida
Tourism--Florida
Homosexuality--Florida
Gay culture--United States
Lesbian culture
AIDS (Disease)--Florida
HIV infections--United States
<em>40 Years of the Parliament House</em> is a documentary film about the history of the Parliament House, a gay resort located at 410 North Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando, Florida. The Parliament House Motor Inn chain was founded in Kansas City, Missouri, by Ned Eddy, Sr. and his two sons, Ned Eddy, Jr. and James "Jimmy" Eddy. The Orlando Parliament House was a 120-room hotel and the first motor inn established by the chain. The inn was designed by Alan Berman and was built on Orlando’s Rock Lake by Hodes and Cumming Construction. Parliament House officially opened on February 11, 1962. Ned Eddy, Jr. served as the inn manager and his brother, Jimmy Eddy, was the manager of the cocktail lounge. <br /><br />With the opening of the Walt Disney World Resort in 1971, came the construction of hotels and motels on International Drive, leaving the Parliament House Motor Inn outside the tourist district. The motor inn soon became a hotspot for prostitution as the OBT area declined. By 1975, the Parliament House was near bankruptcy. On March 27, 1975, William G. Miller (d. 1987) and Michael Hodge (d. 1992) purchased the motor inn and converted it into a gay resort. A couple of years after the deaths of Bill Miller and Mike Hodge, the Parliament House was sold to Susan Unger and Don Granatstein in August of 1999. Unger and Granatstein began renovating the resort, which had been in decline since Hodge's death in 1992. Renovations were completed in 2000. The Parliament House again faced foreclosure in 2010 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 25, 2014. Stakeholders approved a $14-million debt relief plan in February of 2015.
Bain, David
Original 34-minute and 24-second motion picture: <a href="https://youtu.be/pV7jKjWtZuA" target="_blank"><em>40 Years of the Parliament House</em></a>: <a href="http://www.floridalgbtqmuseum.org/%20" target="_blank">GLBT History Museum of Central Florida, Inc.</a>, 2015.
<a href="http://www.floridalgbtqmuseum.org/%20" target="_blank">GLBT History Museum of Central Florida, Inc.</a>
Strack, Joel
Hodges, Rebecca
Caladrino, Tim
Hamlisch, Marvin
Barnard, Ken
Ba'aser, Doug
Barber, John
Bebout, Vicki
Granatstein, Don
Lape, Bill
Studdard, Ron
Tilmon, Willie
Unger, Susan
Wanzie, Michael
<a href="http://ideasorlando.com/" target="_blank">IDEAS</a>
application/website
eng
Moving Image
Parliament House Resort, Orlando, Florida
It Was New Era in 1886
Sanford (Fla.)
Freezes (Meteorology)
Jacksonville (Fla.)
Oviedo (Fla.)
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company
Lake Mary (Fla.)
A newspaper article about Sanford, Florida, during the year of 1913. According to the article, the Sanford community had recovered from the Great Freeze of 1886 and was thriving economically by 1913. This page also included an article on the Ford Model A car and two stops on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) at Lake Mary.<br /><br />The present-day Sanford area was originally inhabited by the Mayaca/Joroco natives by the time that Europeans arrived. The tribe was decimated by war and disease by 1760 and was replaced by the Seminole tribe. In 1821, the United States acquired Florida from Spain and Americans began to settle in the state. Camp Monroe was established in the mid-1830s to defend the area against Seminoles during the Seminole Wars. In 1836, the U.S. Army built a road (present-day Mellonville Avenue) to Camp Monroe during the Second Seminole War. Following an attack on February 8, 1837, the camp was renamed Fort Mellon in honor of the battle's only American casualty, Captain Charles Mellon (1794-1837). The town of Mellonville was founded nearby in 1842 by Daniel Stewart. When Florida became a state three years later, Mellonville became the county seat of Orange County, which was originally a portion of Mosquito County. Citrus was the first cash crop in the area and the first fruit packing plant was constructed in 1869.<br /><br />In 1870, a lawyer from Connecticut by the name of Henry Shelton Sanford (1823-1891) purchased 12,548 acres of open land west of Mellonville. His vision was to make this new land a major port city, both railway and by water. Sitting on Lake Monroe, at the head of the St. Johns River, the city of Sanford earned the nickname of the Gate City of South Florida. Sanford became not only a transportation hub, but a leading citrus industry in Florida, and eventually across the globe. The Great Fire of 1887 devastated the city, which also suffered from a statewide epidemic of yellow fever the following year. The citrus industry flourished until the Great Freezes of 1894 and 1895, causing planters to begin growing celery in 1896 as an alternative. Celery replaced citrus as the city's cash crop and Sanford was nicknamed Celery City. In 1913, Sanford became the county seat of Seminole County, once part of Orange County. Agriculture dominated the region until Walt Disney World opened in October of 1971, effectively shifting the Central Florida economy towards tourism and residential development.
Print reproduction of microfilmed newspaper article: "It Was New Era in 1887." <a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a>, April 26, 1968, Semi-Centennial Edition, page 4: <a href="http://www.sanfordfl.gov/index.aspx?page=456" target="_blank">Sanford Museum</a>, Sanford, Florida.
<a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a>
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eng
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Sanford, Florida