Robert Langford Oral History

Conversations with Robert Langford. Robert speaks on living in Winter Park, building the hotel in Winter Park, as well as his foreign business.

Transcript

This is an interview with Mr. Robert E. Langford, made in his office at the Langford                                                 Resort Hotel, 300 East New England Avenue, Winter Park, Florida, on Nov. 10th, 1981. An interviewer for the Morse Foundation was Mrs. Marjorie R. Muller. 

000:32.7          Thank you, Bob, for letting me come and have this interview with you. I think you probably have a great deal to tell of Winter Park, because you have come here at a time when Winter Park was quite different than what it is right now, and I think we’d like to know how you happened to come – how you happened to pick Winter Park to come to?

000:56.2          Well, that’s a very interesting…very interesting story. It was more (Inaudible 00:01:01) it really was a result of the depression. We were in Chicago and we had a 400 room hotel overlooking Lake Michigan, and people were jumping out of windows. It was in the ’30…early, it was 1931 to be exact, and most of the hotels were in receivership, including ours, as I mentioned, and…things were going from bad to worse since stocks were worth nothing, and banks were…the runs on banks, and et cetera, so I was still in high school at the time. I heard my parents talking about not only having anything but money, but where we were going to spend out the rest of this economic depression, and have a roof over our head,  and three means to eat? And that wasn’t only true of us, but for millions of other people.

01:53.6            That was the big depression.

01:56.2            That was the big depression. The stock market crashed in ’29 and ’30, and then the runs on the banks, and so on. So (Inaudible 00:02:04) conversations at dinner table with my parents, as my dad said to my grandmother and my mother, “I want you to take the chauffeur and the car, and I want to go down to Florida and find us a place to live, just in case this thing gets any worse.”  So they got in the car and drove down the East Coast to Florida, came back the West Coast, and then came across the center, and quite by accident they came through Winter Park, and my grandmother was enchanted with the trees, and the lights, and the beauty, so they engaged a real estate agent and looked around the town, and they bought a home down on Interlochen Avenue for $12,000 on Lake Osceola, right next to the old Seminole Hotel. There was one house (Inaudible 00:03:10) between us and Seminole, and then they just decided to come down three or four months in the winter, and eventually we were one of the few hotel people in Chicago to work out the depression and keep our hotel. And the Stevens Hotel, the Stevens family, lost their hotel which is now the big Hilton hotel, and one of the Stevens brothers committed suicide, and the father went to a mental institution, and they just…the thought of losing all that money putting the LaSalle Hotel, including the Illinois Life Insurance. Same was true of the Blake family, the Blake hotel. They lost the Blake Hotel but they were able to keep some of the stock, and I understand (Inaudible 00:04:08) may still have interest, but anyway…

04:12.5            Was (Inaudible 00:04:12) the Del Prado…was that the hotel you’re talking about?

04:16.3            Yeah. We went…we went into receivership. We had applied for the (Inaudible 00:04:19) but then came the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, and people started coming out. Ford…Henry Ford decreed they’d pay everybody $5 a day, and that considered big news in the automobile industry, and that was (Inaudible 00:04:40). Things (Inaudible 00:04:41) We started getting tours coming up from the Illinois Central to the…Fifty-third Street where our Hotel was located. We were located right on Lake Michigan. Anyway, as we started to come out of the hotel receivership, and we eventually did completely, my folks started spending more and more time in Winter Park, and it was like, by that time I was coming out of college, and actively (Inaudible 00:05:12) the hotel, they spent six or seven months a year here. The thing that I remember so vividly was, in the summer and the fall there’s nobody here…nobody here outside the Ward family, and the Plumbys, and I think two or three of the old families of Winter Park. I can remember many, many weeks I would never see one car in park ever at night for example, and…

05:44.2            What year was that about?

05:45.3            The thirties…thirties…thirties. Early, middle, and late 30’s, and you have to remember, what really made in the state of Florida, which was forgotten in the books is air conditioning. People would board up their houses here from early spring and just take off, whether it was to North Carolina or overseas. It was unlivable here, almost, but for the natives who had acclimated themselves over the years, they had…most of them had attic fans, and they did an unbelievably good job, but most people couldn’t take the heat here without air conditioning. Air conditioning just took Florida out of a three month, four month, and made it a year-round state. That’s (Inaudible 00:06:41). The cars air conditioned, your offices are air conditioned, your stores are air conditioned, everyone’s air conditioned. It wasn’t so then. And you’d (Inaudible 00:06:50) just taking your life in your hand if you had a bad heart.

6:56.8              But beautiful, beautiful weather here.

6:59.4              Fantastic, and uh, of course my…one of the stories I’ve told the Historical Society was…I always think of when I…I love to hunt and fish, and I became acquainted with some of the old time (Inaudible 00:07:15) and they took me on these hunting trips with them into the Gulf (Inaudible 00:07:19) west coast. A lot over in Venice here are in real estate, and I heard him talking about taking the Yankees, and I was a Yankee, but they called me the Yank. That was the only Yank in (Inaudible 00:07:31), but I could shoot well so they respected me.

7:34.7              Do you remember the names of any of those people that you hunted with? Did they live here?

7:39.9              Yes, I can name some of the old time…well, Walter Hunter, old Abe Hunter was right over on Morse Blvd. He used to take care of my bird dogs. The hunter family is pretty well gone from here now, it’s passed away, but…and I used to talk to Mr. Bledsoe, and Mrs. Bledsoe is still a member of the town club, by the way, and uh you should talk to her about  it…

8:04.6              Which…which Mrs…?

8:06.5              L.B. Bledsoe. Those…

8:08.0              Because there are other families.

8:10.2              Well those…Her two sons, one is the Vice President of some bank and, and uh the other one is a doctor. She was a school teacher and he was just a young boy from Alabama, came out a Navy with $5 to start (Inaudible 00:08:24) Brown’s college students…he bought a Model-T  for $5…an old Model-T, and he started hauling around those guys’ trunks and baggage to the train. There was no air service then. They’d go home by train, and that’s how he got started. Well, pretty soon he…he started a couple of gas stations (Inaudible 00:08:46) and the fuel, he’d furnish people with firewood and so on. That’s how I became acquainted with him. He came to our house in the winter often to supply…

8:56.1              That’s how you met him?

8:56.8              That’s how I met him. So my dad said, “(Inaudible 00:09:59)” He said, “Well, I’ll take him (Inaudible 00:09:01)” He was a very, very sharp real estate buyer, and uh even though he didn’t have money he would…he’d turn a little real estate…he’d buy it really cheap and turn it over. So he got me doing it…So I started in real estate. (Inaudible 00:09:21)I…I…I had a feel for land, and I started buying little lots for $200.

9:27.2`             Two hundred dollars?

9:29.1              Two hundred dollars, and then I’d sell them for…

9:29.4              How big would the lot be?

9:30.5              Oh, a regular sized lot, (Inaudible 00:09:30). Just, you know, a hundred by a hundred and fifty.

9:34.5              For $200?

9:35.3              Oh sure. I bought a third of the island of Sicily for $10,000, sold it for $12,000 two years later, and thought I’d just stole (Inaudible 00:09:43) and uh, and he advised me to buy land on um 17-92 (Inaudible 00:09:56) about where Morse Pullout is, and I said, “No, I was…I had just purchased the land Langford apartments was on for $22,000.” It’s hard to believe, but that’s what it was, and that was a hard $22,000. I borrowed the money partially from my mother, and then borrowed it from the Harris Trust in Chicago at 3%; money. That’s how I bought for $22,000 a piece of property.

100:24.1          Try to do it for that…

100:26.4          Well now that’s just unbelievable, but, uh, so then he wanted (Inaudible 00:100:30) and so he went to the bank, and I walked in (Inaudible 00:100:36), but it was the old bank, and they told him they’d loan him $40,000. So he bought the Mount Vernon land for $1,900, and uh, and uh, contracted to build, and be his own contractor-builder (Inaudible 00:100:56) Mount Vernon (Inaudible 00:100:57) addition’s not, but the original (Inaudible 00:100:59). Am I talking too much…?

11:03.7            No, this is, this is…

11:05.5            Okay.

11:06.5            …exactly what we hoped to have.

11:08.8            So about three months later, I’m back up in Chicago. I used to fly my own plane down here when I got building the Langton Parks, but I…when I was back at the hotel, I got a call from him. He said, “Do you know the bank backed out of that…decided they weren’t going to lend me the money? And I’m stretched out to part, to (Inaudible 00:11:31)” And he said, “I’ll give you a mortgage on my home.” He had a beautiful home on Lake Mainton not too far for $17,000. It’s probably worth a half million today. It’s still not done. The corner of the (Inaudible 00:11:42) right next to the Arnold’s. I got a swimming pool, and a grove, and a beautiful home, and everything for $17,000, but things were so tough then in Winter Park…was absolutely…there was nobody here.

11:58.4            What was that year? Can you remember?

12:02.7            It was before the war…first, I mean the second world war. It was before…that’s all I remember. Early forty...

12:06.5            In the Forties.

12:08.0            Oh yeah, ’39, ’40, in there, and um…

12:12.6            And he called you at the Del Prado in Chicago…

12:14.7            …and he said, he said, “I’ll give you half the deal.” I said, “I don’t want half the deal.” I said…I said, “Just, I’ll…I’ll…if you give me enough collateral…” he said, “A very good collateral,” and I had some money and gave it to him, and he finished it, and he paid me back in six months. He paid me back in six months. (Inaudible 00:12:30) Then he wanted…It was just unbelievable – the property – so then he would put…the city has now, which is that park back of the Mount Vernon (Inaudible 00:12:40) that square block. There was a negro that owned it, and he wanted $2,500 for it, for the block, and…

12:54.0            That square block?

12:55:0            That square block, you know ,up to the Mount Vernon. You know the one I’m talking…there’s a little… and Bledsoe had offered him $2,000, and I told him he was crazy, and he said, “Twenty-five hundred,” which was a lot of money in those days, you can’t…you have to be perspective about this whole thing. So he turned it down and said he [Inaudible 13:10.7]. But anyway, my only…getting back to hunting, I don’t know how I got on about to interested in real estate and knowing about this area. I used to take my station wagon, and my two bird dogs, and I’d put them out where…where a white mark [Inaudible 13:35.5] right where the hospital is, and that was an old abandoned country club. It was…It was an old, overgrown old Spanish [Inaudible 13:46.1] and that whole area was just brush, and I used to hunt quail from (Inaudible 00:13:51) on the one side down to Westmore 436. Get a lot of quail…it was just a single little road, and then I’d come back the other side of (Inaudible 00:14:01) to, because you were not allowed to shoot in the city limits. I came right up to Winter Park (Inaudible 00:14:07) and I’d have two dozen quail, and I did the same thing on Lee Road there. I’d hunt from…from 17-92, on one side of road down to the other, and come back the other side, and so the whole island was just full of quail.

14:27.7            No wonder you were attracted by this area.

14:29.7            Oh, then fishing. God the fishing before the pollution in these lakes.

14:34.4            Did you fish in these lakes? Overlay In Lake Virginia and Lake Atheroe, all of them?

14:39.0            Oh I fished every corner for…well, ever since 1930. I fished fifty-one years in these lakes. I know them backward and forward. But you know, a lot has happened to these lakes. It’s changed, and I was on a lake patrol board for years, (Inaudible 00:14:52) the pollution, you see the same thing’s happened (Inaudible 00:14:54) The growth of the area, and the use of fertilizer, and the affluence that goes down the (Inaudible 00:15:02), the storm drains are these lakes…is what’s causing all the trouble, and (Inaudible 00:15:09) just what they do is fertilize Overlay in the lake…

15:14.3            It washes down into the weeds.

15:16.1            Yeah, they just, they just…that’s what created all those weed bars. It was created over the weed board in Winter Park, say you have selected poisoning, and I’m not so sure, and I wrote a letter to the city water park, by the way, last year. I got a long letter from a biologist, that they had an over-poisoned lake, but you never know I’ve been off the weed board five years, (Inaudible 00:15:37) I hadn’t seen a reed of any description in over a year.

15:46.0            Where?

15:47.7            In the lake. It’s all sunk to the bottom. Now to have a clear lake you have to have weeds [Inaudible 15:53.3]  weeds clear the water, you get (Inaudible 00:15:58), and when we were on the board, uh, we’d have selectively, where the bogs are the worst we’d poison (Inaudible 00:16:09) 100 yards, then we’d go another 100 yards, so you had some clear water to fish and swim, and so on. But now there’s no weed guards there, and all (Inaudible 00:16:20) and I…I (Inaudible 00:16:22), and uh I got a letter back from (Inaudible 00:16:31) He’s a biologist and he works for the city, and he said he didn’t understand it either. I said, “Are you sure you’re not over-poisoning these lakes?” And he said, “No,” he says, “I don’t think we have.” But I’m not so sure (Inaudible 00:16:46) 

16:56.3            Well, with Hope Strong being the new mayor, maybe you can…because he’s very conscious. They’re very conscious of this sort of thing.

17:04.0            I say…I…you know, I’ve done (Inaudible 00:17:03) you know, I’ve been progressive all my life and I…I appreciate Winter Park, and I try, as you know, I built a like for the ponds. It was funny, you know, I’d get up to the first floor. Of course there’s nothing worse looking in first floor of an uncompleted building you know, especially in the heart of Winter Park in those days. It was all concrete….And I had oh a dozen or so women call on me at the river (Inaudible 00:17:31) wanted to know what I was doing (Inaudible 00:17:33) in the park. And I said, “My God. I’m not finished” I said, “Well, I’m trying to put the first (Inaudible 00:17:39)” And they said, “Well, that’s just terrible. We don’t need you, we don’t need apartments,” and blah, blah, blah. So I finished the apartment, and I thought I’d get a nice job, and (Inaudible 00:17:55) I did everything. 

000:17:58.2     So, my manager at that time was Mrs. Harbind, and she said that several of the ladies, they didn’t come to me but they came in and told her that they appreciated the lamppost that I put in front of the park. They can see their way home at nights. [Laughter]

000:18:25.9     This…The Langford hotel…when I came here, there was a brown kind of big bungalow house…didn’t you…when did you buy…did you buy it then and move that away?

000:18:43.9     What I did… yeah, I moved it. Let me explain, I moved probably between the Lanford Apartments, and this created a lot…when I came here, I used to take pictures. I really didn’t have the time, I was one man, I had done everything myself. My father was against me building the hotel and the park. My mother thought I had lost my mind…but I felt that I had a feel by that time (Inaudible 00:19:06) and fortunately for me, it had been successful.

000:19:11.0     Well you decided…let’s backup just a little bit. You decided after she had been here Overlay Yeah, that’s right.

000:19:16.6     All right, good. I got way ahead of the story. Ok, I came down here and hunted and fished, and every time I’d be around those lakes and I feel… I lived in a big city and we were near the steel mills, and pollution, and (Inaudible 00:19:31) Indiana (Inaudible 00:19:33) in the stockyards would blow their stench over the city of Chicago…You know Chicago in those days. I’d come down with a beautiful clear air, and no dirt, and you could wear a white shirt for 2 weeks if you just didn’t get tired of looking at it, you know? And we had spent so much money in our hotel, we had a crew of 12 just cleaning venetian blinds all the time, and for the dirt coming (Inaudible 00:19:56)

000:19:56.3     You mean at the Del Prada?

000:19:58.5     Del Prada, right. And the thing here…the cleanliness, that I’m very much against, and I don’t know who to write, these coal slurry things (Inaudible 00:200:06)…the worst thing that could possibly do to (Inaudible 00:200:10) this area, to supply their fuel oil…fuel by having a slurry…coal slurry, but as you know, they’ve have a big…up in the…(Inaudible 00:200:20) Florida…the Florida environmental, I guess right now, there’s no way they can put…I mean, they’re going to ruin just what the state has, which is cleanliness, clean industry. That is the worst possible thing you can do to this area. It’s the beginning of the end of the state of Florida as far as I know, where you can keep things clean and the dirt flying all over the place all of the time. Because coal is coal and I don’t care what they say. They can’t…if it was… if they could do it clean, everybody else would be using it, coal, and there’s no way they could do it and they’re trying to sell the Orange County and the city of Orlando and that it’s a…sure it’s cheap, it’s not cheap in the long run. It’s going to create pollution hazards, it’s going to create dirt (Inaudible 00:21:09) but for all of the people living in this area, it’s going to just (Inaudible 00:21:12) it’s just terrible. So if I… 

000:21:19.3     Well, you might get to the Environmentalist and…

000:21:22.5     I don’t know who they are, I don’t even know how to approach em… I really don’t…

000:21:25.9     So that would be something to check…

000:21:27.3     Check. I would…I would we be very happy to (Inaudible 00:21:30), because I know I’ve lived with that…

000:21:32.4     Well I did too…

000:21:35.4     Well you know. You surely know… So, as I used to… Getting back…I like…it’s such a beautiful place…(Inaudible 00:21:44) but there’s nobody here, and the only ones that came down, living mostly in New Englanders…mostly New Englanders...

000:21:55.2     The very wealthy…

000:21:56.7     The very wealthy and they keep…

000:21:58.5     And came down for six months… [muttering]

00:22:06.4       And so I…I looked in the map where commercial property was, or where I could build apartments, and this was one of two places in Winter Park in this area that you could do what I’m doing… zone, long before I got here it was zoned, the Langford apartments, I know it would change any zone, that’s one thing that I have to make clear.

000:22:35.3     You built those first?

000:22:36.8     Yes, apartments first.

000:22:38.4     I didn’t realize that, before the hotel?

000:22:40.9     Before the hotel, 1948. Finished in ’49. And…

000:22:46.8     And you bought this property after…

000:22:49.2     Yes. I started out…I never intended to build a hotel.   It's a crazy thing.   The best house happened to be on the corner (Inaudible 00:22:56) - the Schultz home was right on the corner of New England and Interlocken. It was a…and had beautiful azaleas and a big piece of property.   And he was in the real estate business, and I (Inaudible 00:23:09) long time and he thought he was going to retire, and…so he stopped doing... He was in poor health and he said he wasn't going to sell it.   But he finally said, "Yeah,  okay, I'll sell it." And matter of fact, a lot of the azaleas I used around the hotel are from his house.   I used a lot of the trees.   I used every bush and tree as you know.  There isn’t a decent tree that I could move (Inaudible 00:23:32) that’s not on this property still. And when I laid out the hotel, to save those live oaks in the driveway you know, I took the architect and I put a string in the area he could design the building, and I said, “If you touch those Oaks, I’ll shoot you in cold blood.” [Laughing] and so that’s why the hotel is built just where it is.

000:23:53.9     Who was the architect? A local person?

00:23:56.3       No, he was from St. Petersburg. I think his name was Bill…He had a number of awards... European awards for…and I have travelled all over the state looking at constructions, and I had found a couple of apartments in St. Petersburg I liked very much. I found out he (Inaudible 00:24:11) and I traced him down, and he was a Columbia grad…he was a Columbia architect school graduate and he had a very excellent reputation and…and…

00:24:27.0       When you saw this house, did that… was that the thing that sparked the…?

00:24:29.9       No, I started out…well this house for the hotel… I said, “Yea, the apartments look taking off…” In fact, Rey Green was the mayor at the time, you know, and he said, “What are you going to charge for these apartments” I said, “Maybe $10, even maybe $25 dollars a month, something very nominal.” But the dollar was worth a lot then. And he said, “You’ll never get it.” And I said, “Why don’t you think so?”, He said, “They just won’t pay that down there.” And I said, “There’s nothing to for  pay. (Inaudible 00:25:01) homes that were made into boarding houses at the university.” I said, “People change, and they want better rooms, and they want…(Inaudible 00:25:13)” [Laughing] It was really funny when I think back at it. So… I thought well… it could work… In the mean time, Chicago started changing. You know… and the first World War, and the second World War, there were tens of thousands of…you can say, lower class people in Chicago. There were mills and manufacturing. The area started to change, and crime started picking up, and I began to see the crime I didn’t like. Most of my friends were moving up to the north side of the suburbs because the change of neighborhoods, and then we were going to lose business because people, particularly in all the big cities, you know, Detroit, Cleveland…And I went to my dad, and in the meantime, I had been thinking that I would like to live the rest of my life…my were out of high school…in here, that’s why I built the apartments. Then I began…when the war started changing the area, the hotel, and we had a beautiful hotel right overlooking lake Michigan and a park, and we were not the only one affected. [Mumbling] I thought, “Well, it’s time to really seriously think of moving to Florida.” And my dad just wouldn’t hear of it, but I went to him and I said, “You know, I see  a trend, and you could get top dollar now, but I don’t know two years from now.” I said, “We have a clientele now, but I haven’t seen nothing but dimes here yet.” Well… it was a long story, but he didn’t agree with me and it cost us a lot of money.  In the meantime, I was so (Inaudible 00:27:11) I was running the hotel and he was enjoying Florida. [Laughing]. So I bought Artie Schultz’s house and the fellow next door (Inaudible 00:27:27) with a fairly old Victorian Gable (Inaudible 00:27:31) houses and it’s a shame that they were actually very poor people who were living (Inaudible 00:27:38) and they weren’t keeping them up, and they were pretty run down as far as (Inaudible 00:27:43) and they would have done that eventually here (Inaudible 00:27:51)…But…so it started to be…It started out that they wanted to… the next house wanted to sell, and the price was… I couldn’t resist, so I bought it. Well, it was a bigger place, and the next house, on the far corner, and they wanted to sell, and I don’t know…then it just…that’s…then I went, “Well, a small hotel, about 80 rooms,” that again, people  were used to more moderate things up north. And the Midwest would start coming in and different areas of people that were used to modern buildings, modern…more comfort, and of course air conditioning, so on and so forth. And you know, when I was in (Inaudible 00:28:40)…So I thought, “Why not build a small hotel?” Then I went around the country looking (Inaudible 00:28:48), I went up to Cape Cod, I looked at little hotels, I thought it would be little red-bricked (Inaudible 00:28:53)… I still had new England on my mind, and so, it’s… it’s just really a long story, and I thought, “Well I’ll build a hotel and then I’ll (Inaudible 00:29:05)” every once in a while, somebody would come along and want to sell? Did I want to sell? Did I want to sell? And I had no intention of buying as much as I did. I had no intentions. And they were stretching me (Inaudible 00:29:24) price, I mean today, My God…. I mean, I sold the acre … 6/10 of the library for $325,000 and (Inaudible 00:29:43) well the last house I did, the Chambers’ house, and they knew I needed  it… then… you know, it’s like gives me what he…like what? $26,000 (Inaudible 00:29:52) They paid through the nose because people knew I wanted it, then it would have stood out like a sore thumb, so I paid about $125,000 for that property, and finished off...So then, I was at the decision to make a hotel on that spot. And well, by then I knew that I was going to do this… My wife didn’t…

00:300:16.6     Bea didn’t want to come…?

00:300:19.7     Not in the beginning, not at all. And by that time, because the change in schools and Hyde Park, and I decided I better move up to (Inaudible 00:300:33)… because I wanted the kids… and Bobby went to (Inaudible 00:300:40), and…but Camelia was killing me. (Inaudible 00:300:47)

00:300:53        Just exactly where we were.

00:300:55        Is that right?

00:300:57        I went to (Inaudible 00:300:58)

00:31:00          That was (Inaudible 00:31:01) Well anyway, they got a fantastic education so it was well worth it, but in the meantime Camelia (Inaudible 00:31:09) the south side of Chicago twice a day, and it took me three hours to go and come (Inaudible 00:31:15) traffic (Inaudible 00:31:18). [Cut tape]

00:31:33.6       So you said that you went to the doctor and he examined you and told you, you better get out of Chicago.

00:31:42          Well, he said if I kept it up I wouldn’t be around, and I went home and told Beatrice that night that I wouldn’t be around but she would. And without hesitation, she told me to go back to Winter Park and buy a house, and she would sell the house, and get the kids out of school, and so we put the things in motion…How many months was it before we moved on (Inaudible 00:32:01)? Do you remember? 

00:32:09.1       Oh when we put the house on for sale?

00:32:09.4       Oh that’s right. We moved out and hadn’t sold it. That was it. Well, that doesn’t make any difference… that’s fine. But once she got here, I had private…have him come down for five or six years, because I had more interest down here by that time and I saw quite a future in this whole area. But when she got here, she was so delighted, and she asked me why I didn’t ask her to come for the last few years. And of course we’ve been happy ever since. But it was entirely new ballgame and to start the hotel and…of course, I had build the Langford Apartments in 1948. To start the hotel, I found out that I was…had a gigantic job to do because Winter Park was not well known. In fact, most of my friends in the north when I’d say, “I’m going to move to Winter Park,” they’d say, “You mean Winter Haven?” I ‘d say, “No, Winter Park.” And they’d say, “Well, you mean Winter Garden.” I’d say “No, Winter Park.” And it got to be kind of a hang-up with me, in fact, the…when the furniture arrived…was supposed to arrive from Chicago from the furniture companies, in fact there’s a…sent the furniture of the Langford Apartments all to Winter Haven. So it was a constant fight. I found out that Winter Park, as I used to joke, was one of the best kept secrets in Florida. Everybody knew about Orlando, but then nobody knew about Winter Park. But the reason was, the people there didn’t want anybody to know about Winter Park. Everybody in fact, I get a big kick out of it for years, everybody that moves to Winter Park, doesn’t want anybody to come by [Laughing] it’s really pleasant. I’ve heard some of the people in the years back in Winter Park say, “I don’t care if the grass grows in the street. I don’t want another person to come to Winter Park.” And many of those same people made more money than they know what to do with developing Winter Park and the surrounding. But in the early days, I had to travel around the state, and to go to various conventions and associations, and sell the hotel, and tell them about Winter Park. So then I got the hotel going pretty well and they said, “Well you have a nice hotel, Winter Park is a pretty place but what do you do after 9 o’clock?” So that brought me into the Supper Club business. And around that time, I had some of the great names of show business, some were the top performers in television today. I opened the club with Hildegard, who at that time was the so-called French Chanteuse running the Hilton circuit. I had Rudy Valle, and Penny Youngman, and a fellow named Frank something. I can’t remember his name. He was the one that was a drunken bartender on the Jackie Gleason Show for years. He has since passed away. And Eddie Peabody, the world’s greatest banjo player to ever live, and Charlie Calis, who is now a star at…he was just a drummer in a band, and now he is a Las Vegas, top liner in  a lot of movies. And anyway, I saw a lot of those stars go to the top. One of the interesting things, when Castro took over Cuba, a great many exiles moved…came up to this area, and I was able to get some of the most fantastic shows (Inaudible 00:35:58) for almost nothing. I would have 12-15 shows that would do justice to any show in Las Vegas, and of course I could get them for practically to feed them. So, those kinds of things were very interesting. But still, the show, the Supper club…I believed in ballroom dancing, not rock and roll. And we could play rock, and we require jackets and always have, and I don’t go for, I don’t allow any filth or dirty jokes at uh… anyway, it’s a show you can take your kids to, your grandchildren… and if one of them gets off-color, he doesn’t come back. Sometimes you can get carried away with their applause and get a little off-color.

00:36:47.1       Well did…How long about would a show like this…would a contract be? For a week? Or?...

00:36:54.2       Two weeks generally. Takes a week to get them really known, and the second week… and of course, some of the better stars, like Eddie Peabody or like today, the… I have this fellow imitating Al Jolson, and he sings. He’s an Englishman and he sings better than Al Jolson, he sounds more like Al Jolson than Al Jolson does. He’s fantastic. He’ll be here this winter, I just cant think… Clive Baldwin… he’s a very popular singer. He used to do a lot of blackface, but when the Civil Liberties got into the act, why then he just does it…beautiful performer, everybody like him. (Inaudible 00:37:33)

00:37:35.9       You have a local talent don’t you? The Mary… that lives right here in town? The Booth? Dotty Booth?

00:37:45.2       Well there has been a number of local…I’ve had a number of local number area people. A great many of my performers come up from Miami because they come off the cruise ships. I have a Overlay And I may have picked some top performers on the way between New York and Miami, and between Cruise Ships, you catch them when they need a little supper money you might say. But it’s not a business I like, it’s just a business that I feel I have to keep a variety of interesting things to do. And today, when I’m selling, I go to all the international conventions, and you know I do a lot of foreign business. It’s unbelievable the (Inaudible 00:38:32)

00:38:33.9       Oh I didn’t know that.

00:38:36.5       Well, for example, Finland is one of my biggest customers, and it’s hard to believe FinAir sends a lot of business here. And I have a lot of business from London, Ireland, I just had a big group from Scotland this week.

00:38:50          How did that develop uh…?

00:38:52.3       Well of course, Disney is the catalyst, but I found out that I would try to sell Disney and they say, “Well how close are you to Disney?” and I’d say, “Well, we’re about 50 minutes further in downtown Orlando. I say, “If you want to see Disney, and you want to see Central Florida at it’s best and the beauty of Central Florida, and if you don’t want to get into a cab, or a bus, or a car, you can walk out the door to 20 restaurants, you can walk the city boat tours, you can walk the largest collection of Tiffany glass in the World. You can walk the Beal-Shell museum. You can walk the international exchange down a block away at the Barnett bank.” And I sell that, and Europeans like the atmosphere of Winter Park much more than they do the Disney area. And I explained to them too, “If you just have kids, (Inaudible 00:39:52) the closer you get to the front door of Disney, the better you are.” But I said, “If you have adults, particularly in the summer where it’s 95-100 in the shade here, and humid, and you have to stand…and the adults have to stand in line an hour to go to ride a ride or to another attraction at Disney, they come back like they’ve seen a ghost. They’re very willing to sit around the pool or browse around Winter Park,” and that’s we come in and we (Inaudible 00:400:20) and we made a very, very positive showing on that merit. Well known. We’re listed in about 20 European brochures, all the south global tours, South Africa, you wouldn’t believe we deal within South Africa. We’re bringing people in. Of course, they’re coming in to Disney but we’re bringing them to Winter Park. Mr. Ren…I know, the other day called me into his store and he gave me a $75 tie and said, “I want to tell you,” he said, “we had a bunch of Scotsmen here that would like to bought out the store.” And he said…Oh I advertise on television. I don’t know if you’ve seen my ad. 

00:400:59        Yes.

00:41:00          And I feature, you know, the entertainment. I feature the beauty of Winter Park, and the City Boat tours, and the Lakes, and the homes…

00:41:09          And Park Avenue. 

00:41:10          And Park Avenue. And in his picture of his store was…I mean his block was in the picture, and he just thought that was the greatest thing to ever happen. But, really, I sent a lot of business to Park Avenue.

00:41:24.2       Well I’m sure you do and that’s…it’s very noticeable. I mean, we who have lived here for some time have noticed how it is increasing. It’s a definite asset to Winter Park, this hotel.

00:41:40.7       Well, you know, I was a pioneer. It was the first modern apartment building in Winter Park, the first modern hotel. And I had a tremendous amount of opposition, as I explained to you the other day, and I understood it. I didn’t in the beginning, because… Did I tell you on tape about the…when I was building the Langford Apartments, I believe we just talked about that off the record… 

00:42:05.1       No we… That’s on the tape.

00:42:06.8       It’s on the tape? Ok?

00:42:08.3       That’s very interesting.

00:42:12.0       But part of the biggest fight I had, they wanted me to… They didn’t want to give me a liquor license. I said, “Well, I won’t build a hotel.” So, (Inaudible 00:42:21) said, “We’re going to come down and appear before the commission.” I was in Chicago at the time. So I cane down, and I appeared before the commission, everybody in Winter Park was there, particularly the counsel of the churches. And one thing that I remember, at that time, this particular Winter Park was about 90% Baptist, and about 5% Episcopalian, and about 3% Catholic. And the Baptists naturally have an aversion to the alcohol, I mean, it’s part of their church creed I guess you might say, or one of their aims is to eliminate. And I never saw so much opposition. I just walked…when it was all over, they just…there wasn’t even room. It was it the old city hall there. So I just when it was all over I just walked back to the…I got in the car, went back to the house and I called Rey Green up, and I said, “Well that’s…There’s not going to be any hotel.” I said, “I can’t possibly run a hotel without having alcohol.” And I said, “You lose too much money on food,” I said, “you have to make it up on (Inaudible 00:43:37) wine. I know what I’m talking about.” And so he said, “No, you come down again.” I said (Inaudible 00:43:44), he said, “You come down.” And so I made a trip all the way down about two or three months, I was on the agenda. A bigger crowd than ever, and it was worse than ever.

00:43:55.9       What year was that? Do you remember?

00:43:59.2       Well, if I built the hotel in ’55, I started ’55, it would had to be about ’52, ’53, in there. And I… and they said, “Why can’t you…?” The people would ask me right there like I was on the witness stand. “Why can’t you run a restaurant…?” I said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do: If you’ll underwrite my loss in the food and beverage, I won’t… If you people (Inaudible 00:44:28) will underwrite my loss, I would be very happy to serve… It’s  a necessary evil as far as I’m concerned.” So with that, I was voted down against. So I was really….I had been kind of given an idea that I might have a chance, you know, and I was really upset. By that time some of the business people worked together to make some noise too. And, incidentally, the Episcopalian minister voted for me, and also the Catholic.

00:45:01          Who was the minister Overlay?

00:45:02          I can’t remember now, but…

00:45:03          Well, I know in that time, I can remember.

00:45:06          But the…it was almost 100% of the others were against me. So I was really mad, and Rey Green called me up and said, “Come on over to the house.” And I said, “Well, we have nothing to talk about.” I said (Inaudible 00:45:19) And he said, “No really, come down once more, (Inaudible 00:45:26) just covered an awful lot of ground, a lot of conversations and phone calls.” So I said, reluctantly, my dad thought I lost my mind by that time…Well, I knew I couldn’t…I wanted to build a hotel and I knew I couldn’t build it without… so they said, “Well, ok, you can build…”They finally said, “You can build a hotel but you can’t…you have to serve liquor at the table.” And I said, “Okay (Inaudible 00:45:54)” “You can’t put the chairs at the bar.” They had a lot of little poppy things everybody was throwing in there. You can go up to the bar and have a beverage but you can’t sit down. And it was just a lot of crazy stuff. One of the biggest arguments against, that I was going to corrupt the morals of Rollins College. That was the one I heard…it made me laugh so hard. Today, it’s even extra funny, but at time it wasn’t even funny at all. I said, “I don’t want a Rollins college. I’m not interested in kids or college students.”

00:46:26.1       They had Harpers anyway didn’t they?

00:46:27.6       Oh, they just took Harpers over and you couldn’t get in there with…and that brings me to… if I go jump way ahead. I’d rather kill me than say this one, but the members of the Presbyterian church and Dr. Delgazi is the greatest guy that lived.  He’s as sweet as…and  I was listening to one of his sermons one time and in it, he just said that he was born in the Canary islands, and that he had wine on the table every day including Sunday. It was kind of casual…he was not talking about alcohol but he was just talking about living in the Canary islands, and how nice it was, and so on.  So that was about two years before that. So the next time liquor comes up, whether you can serve liquor on Sundays. By that time, we were having people come from, you know… international people, Disney still wasn’t here but we… no… they weren’t here, I can’t remember, Disney was up…So there was a… the package tours around here wanted to serve liquor, and the restaurants wanted to serve liquor on Sunday. We have another hearing, and I want…because people would come in and say, “You mean we can’t get a glass of wine on Sunday you know, with our dinner?” And that’s all we wanted to serve with food, we didn’t want to open a bar. We had bartenders out in the… and people thought it was ridiculous, you couldn’t get a glass… people travel all over the word, like it is today and everything’s… So they had this hearing, and again the ministers came up, and my wife promised me, she said, “I want you to promise me, you wont say a word. You promise me you won’t say a word?” And I said, “No, I promise, I won’t say a word.” So we went there and… they started… the minister started talking against selling liquor on Sunday, and finally, Dr. Delgado got up and was eloquently waiving his arms, and blah blah blah blah blah… we got to stop it, we got to stop it right now, and so on and so forth. So I looked…I was looking at all of the commissioners and their tongues were hanging out, and you know there were…I knew it was just a dead issue. And I said to my wife, I said, “Beatrice I got to say something, I have to say something. It’s in our defense.” So I went to…up on the stand and I said, “I want to just answer Dr. Delgado.” I said, “You know, we’re not asking for bars open, we’re just asking to be able to serve a glass of wine and drink it. (Inaudible 00:49:22) Because we’re having… our business is increasing, the whole area is growing, people travel all over the world.” And I said, “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I heard Dr. Delgado from the pulpit say that he’s had wine on his own house on Sunday. And if that’s good enough for Dr. Delgado, I’m sure it’s good enough [laughing]…” I tell you, he came back up and he said, “That’s right, he’s right.” He said…Oh yeah, another thing I said…You know, I don’t know if you know it, but I landscaped most of the Presbyterian church. I finished the landscape on that stone bench. And he said…And I would take care of all the ministers that come to town, (Inaudible 00:500:14). I said, “Every time Dr. Delgado calls me, I’m glad to do this. He’s a wonderful guy, and my wife’s very active in the church.” I said, “That has nothing to do with this, we’re just talking about common sense now. We’re not…Winter Park is not a bunch of blue collar workers and a bunch of beer drinkers. They’re just travelled, educated people that are used to having, and why can’t they sit down and have a glass of wine?” (Inaudible 00:500:42) And then he says, “We’re just trying to stop the sale of wine.” But anyway it did interrupt…they did pass that we could have on Sunday,  and poor old Doc, he caught me after this, and he lost his voice, I really upset him. I guess he was the only one that ever has spoken and people don’t speak up against a minister you know. But I just felt that I was on firm ground, I mean I felt that… It didn’t bother anybody…that we serve wine on Sunday to this day.  I mean, it’s a fear of progress. And it’s well founded. And getting back to the growth of Winter Park, everybody’s saying, all the years, all the early years… [Overlap]

00:51:37.4       No, no, I’m watching this, that’s all. I don’t want to run out this time.

00:51:45.9       I’ve heard previous mayors get upset. They don’t want any more business coming, they don’t want anybody coming into Winter Park, they don’t want growth. This has been going on for… I will tell you, when I first came into Winter Park, if you had guests visiting and they were going to Winter Park, you had two or three places you can take them. You can take them to Genius Drive Lake (Inaudible 00:52:07), you could take them down Palmer Avenue via Tuscany, and  that was Winter Park outside the real stretch (Inaudible 00:52:18) Interlocken. And today, there's literally thousands of homes and planted trees. You can go anywhere, any direction in Winter Park proper and see beautiful plants, and beautiful shrubbery, and beautiful homes. There's nothing wrong at all with growth as long as it's controlled. 

00:52:40.9       That's right.

00:52:41.6       It's controlled growth, it’s the name of the game in Winter Park, and I think we have a mayor now that will see that we are in control, and I'm a…I didn’t feel bad about being defeated. I did feel bad, I should say that, about being defeated (Inaudible 00:52:55) back at the hotel. Because I thought, Winter Park was still in realm of probably 50…60 fine citizen couples, taxpayers as off the tax rolls now… people want to put with help the arts, and the culture in the area contributed in every way. I mean, that's the kind of people…the kind of people I have in the Langford Apartments, that’s the kind of people I put there. But there was, you know, there was a definite…a lot of people didn’t want me to have it, so, you know, a strange thing, where the cloisters apartment is… I was offered that property…the Virginia Apartments…so cheap. Then I turned it down because I didn’t want to take over anymore Winter Park. In fact a friend of mine said to me, this was going way back, he said, “Let's build a hotel.” I said, “What are you doing to do? Give Winter Park twenty-four hours to move out?” [Laughter]. Really, I got the feeling, you know, (Inaudible 00:54:00) moved down further on Interlochen and then I would have some enemies. (Inaudible 00:54:06) So I backed off of it. I wanted it…I wanted to put a hotel apartment going down to that water. And then would put restaurant on that water (Inaudible 00:54:14) but…

00:54:18.7       As it turned out, though, this is fine.

00:54:21.1       Fine, I know, I see it. It's not…it was not a question of being…I just have a like of nice property. I just…I like…I like what I do. 

00:54:30.7       Well, I'd think it would be interesting to know also, the…you've had some famous, people visit in your hotel.

00:54:41.1       Unbelievable.

00:54:41.7       Can you remember some of them? 

00:54:44.1       Oh, yes.   Well, I've had, for example, Mrs. Roosevelt.  Franklin D…Eleanor, Roosevelt's wife, came to be a speaker at a Winter Park Chamber of Commerce dinner at the Langford Hotel, I don’t remember the year - I think it was the last term of Eleanor's, I mean…

00:55:06.0       Franklin’s…

00:55:06.7       …Franklin's presidency.  And I had the good fortune to have tea up in her suite with her, and a nice…about a half an hour of conversation. And she said, "Tell me, what kind of a…what is the political leaning of the town I'm in here?" And I said, "Mrs. Roosevelt," I said, "You are in the heart of the most die-hard conservative Republican community in the United States."  "Wonderful!" she said.  "Wonderful!"  She said, "What don’t they like…what do they like the least?"  And I said, "Well, I could just start out with - one thing on the list is the United Nations."  "Fine, that's what I will talk about tonight." And she did, and I want to tell you, having seen her in pictures, which never did her justice, really, and seeing her in movies, and so on, but to talk to her in person, she was absolutely a powerful woman, and a very, very fine woman.  I had a complete turnabout in my thoughts of Eleanor Roosevelt.

00:56:19.3       Very gracious. 

00:56:19.9       Very gracious, very gracious, very smart. And then, of course, we had, Mamie Eisenhower stay with us ten days…I guess four years ago. The year before she died. 

00:56:38.3       Was she visiting somebody? How did she happen to come here? 

00:56:40.4       Yes, she had a friend…she had a friend in Winter Park, an old army officer's widow, that had been a friend. They'd been friends in the early years of the military. And she just loved the hotel. She came with seventeen plain…secret service men. They took over a whole floor, and I guess they stayed with her until she died. But she was only coming two or three days, but she just loved Winter Park. She had the men drive her all over, and she just thought Winter Park was great, and was coming back. And you know, there was a rumor around in the paper, you'd saw that she had an alcohol problem. But the secret service men told me that it's not true. She did drink. But she had an ear problem. Her sense of balance…

00:57:29.9       Oh so it would be, equilibrium. 

00:57:32.2       Equilibrium…give her a sense of balance, that she looked like she was… believe me… you know, and I've seen people and I’ve had friends have that. So they told me…I had good rapport with them. They told me in all honesty, “She drinks like any…” the paper’s are all…knew all about that. 

00:57:53.0       It's just a shame that people are so judgmental when they really don’t understand. 

00:57:58.5       Then, last but not least, three years ago, Ronald Reagan and his wife spent their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in the Langford Resort Hotel, up in a suite.   And I had dinner with them, and…I shouldn't say dinner - I felt so sorry for them.   They had secret service (Inaudible 00:58:21)  They were spending their wedding anniversary there and they had secret service standing in every corner of the room, out in the hall, and…

00:58:27.7       No privacy or whatsoever.

00:58:29.4       And all I was doing was directing, kind of like a head waiter, directing the waiters when they brought the food up.  And I just thought that’s a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It's a shame. Just a shame. I mean, I don’t envy those people at all.

00:58:42.2       Wouldn’t you hate to live with that all time?

00:58:45.7       God, I’ll tell you – thinking that somebody’s going to shoot at you. I think it's terrible. But we had… oh… Dr. Teller the atomic scientist, and we had General Mark Clark was here last year. General Omar Bradley stayed with us in the past. Oh, so many figures, just a few months ago, (Inaudible 00:59:07) Keiser, Wall Street week was with us. It's one (Inaudible 00:59:14) about the…that I enjoy. Speaking of atomic scientist, you know, I have attended the University of Chicago (Inaudible 00:59:22) …at our hotel in Chicago during the war. Unknown to me, we had housed all the atomic scientists that were working on the atom bomb. They were there on fictitious names out of the Argon Laboratory. And as you know, a mile from the hotel, down on the squash courts in Chicago, is the first chain reaction…

00:59:44.8       That's what I heard. It was, wasn’t it underneath the bleachers of some ….?

00:59:49.8       It was under that squash court, underneath the old stadium which has since been torn down. I used to play squash in that same court. It had a lead lining in the walls… strange… squash court.

1:000:07.0       Well, do you now, in the Langford…do you still have any kind of clubs other than those two?

1:000:16.4       Oh, yes. I…maybe I didn’t elaborate on the…did we talk about the (Inaudible 01:000:20) on previous tapes?

1:000:23.7       No. Mm-mmm.

1:000:25.7       Well…

1:000:26.3       We did, but that was a part that didn’t Overlay

1:000:31.0       Oh I see. Okay. Well, when I…about the time I opened the hotel back in '55, I'd decided that one of the things that I should do is to acquaint the local who’s who, so called, who’s who, and the hotel, and get them used to what I was trying to do. And I…So I had a great deal of time, had a lot of help, a lot of people in Winter Park, and secure, (Inaudible 01:01:07) a about 175-200 (Inaudible 01:01:09)

1:01:11.3         Hold on…We’re almost out of… 

1:01:17.1         And, (Inaudible 01:01:18) Winter Park, and I invited him to join the town club, and what it was to be was a social club where we have lectures, they could have a use of the pool, they could…they had their own special…Tree Top Room is a room that is a club room. They had service up there at all times. They could eat or drink, and excuse me, and have speakers, et cetera… bridge parties, movies, et cetera, so on. The idea was great, but I was way over my head and naïve because I found out as time went by, obviously, I had to relinquish the club and have them elect officers, and board of governors, and in so doing there was a membership problem and they wanted to limit the membership, and they didn’t want certain…certain people…people asked for admittance… they would turn down. And this created a chain reaction, and I had… 

[End Tape]