Walk of Fame 2

Sometimes I forget just how few people lived in Florida at the beginning of the last century. It was really a vast land with a small population and the few hardy souls who lived here must have rubbed elbows with each other. So there are many interesting instances of well known Floridians crossing paths with other well-known Floridians. For instance, Zora Neale Hurston stayed in the St. Augustine hotel owned by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and spent time in the Ft. Pierce studio of Beanie Backus, who shared painting tips with entrepreneurial African Americans who later became known as the Highwaymen. So I shouldn't be surprised that Thomas Edison bought his property from Sam Summerlin, son of one of Orlando's original pioneers or that Edison knew Hamilton Holt, president of Winter Park's Rollins College.

Holt was the gentleman who created the Walk of Fame at Rollins College in 1929. And apparently he didn't stop there. He gave Thomas Edison a stone with his name carved on it and Edison started his own "Walk of Fame" at his Winter Estate in Ft. Myers. The Ft. Myers version is not nearly as large and complete as the Winter Park version, and on the rainy day I was there, I couldn't find many outstanding stones. It was reported that the stone from Henry Ford's homestead was left uncarved, because Ford said he was "just a simple country boy."

Perhaps, Edison, Holt and Ford found themselves to be kindred spirits in the early days of the 20th century. Consider these quotes by Holt, Edison and Ford extolling the virtues of hard work:

"Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Half effort does not produce half results, it produces no results. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last."
– Hamilton Holt

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."
– Thomas Edison

"Opportunity will not overlook you because you are wearing overalls."
– Henry Ford

Carved in stone

Rollins College has another fascinating feature just down the road from the Beal-Maltbie Shell Museum. Created in 1929 by then Rollins College president Hamilton Holt, the Walk of Fame features between five and six hundred individual stones with names of historical figures and places etched on them. The Walk is a horseshoe shaped path connecting to Holt Avenue in the heart of the Rollins Campus. Surrounded by flowering azaleas and in some places, covered by dwarf mondo grass, the Walk features names like Helen Keller, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Confucius, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, Shakespeare and my distant relative Ethan Allen. Supposedly the rocks all come from the homes and birthplaces of these famous people and places. Some have smaller rocks inset into larger stones and in some places it is evident that these smaller rocks have been pried off. Jack London's stone appears to be a cannonball.

Far and away the most interesting stepping stones I've ever seen, the rocks are interesting just from a typographical perspective. It's both a history lesson and a nice stroll through a shady part of Winter Park. I say take the kids and make a game out of seeing how many names they recognize. Will they know Henry Nehlring the local botantist? Or how about Dr. Edmund Skellings, the Poet Laureate of Florida? (I admit I didn't know that last one...)

Black and white images from the State Archives of Florida

Treasures of the Tides

Imagine an attraction located on an urban college campus, that was a whopping thirty cents to enter and featured "lowly animals known as mollusks." Such a place existed right down the road from Disney and the mega theme parks up until the late '80s in Winter Park. This site came on my radar on another inspection of my 1955 map of Florida attractions. In the middle of Central Florida, above the Singing Tower and below the Big Tree, was something marked "Shell Museum (Rollins College)." Rollins College, nicknamed the "Harvard of the South", is located just beyond downtown Orlando. Sure enough, the Beal-Maltbie Shell Museum building still stands on Holt Avenue. I've driven by it many times, and never known it was there. Built in 1940, the museum was built by Dr. Birdsey Maltbie to house the extensive shell collection of his friend Dr. James H. Beal.



A New York Times article from 1986 still lists the museum as a great place to visit in Central Florida but from what I can tell, the collection was donated to the Florida State Museum of Natural History in Gainesville sometime soon afterwards. Today the building houses the school's Environmental Studies Department.

My Mother-in-law remembers visting as a child and in particular the iconic giant clam shell. A google search brings up many postcards of small children sitting in the enormous mollusk. Later a water fountain was added to the inside of the shell. The premier artifact seemed to have been a carved cameo featuring Aurora (the dawn) formerly owned by King Victor Emanuel of Italy. The inside of the museum's brochure reads: "Seething with life the ever-changing tides cast their fresh haul upon the shore. Some of these treasures of uncommon beauty are the shells of the lowly animals known as mollusks." It's a shame the museum is no longer open. It makes me wonder how many odd little attractions are still out there, treasures of the tides just waiting to be uncovered.

Postcard images from the State Archives of Florida