This photograph of the officers of the Winter Park Land Company was taken in 1953. Pictured here are H.W. Barnum (Secretary-Treasurer), Jeanette Genius McKean (President), and Harold A. Ward, Sr.(Vice President). The trio are gathered at the foot of an ancient sycamore tree that was planted by Mrs. David Mizell in 1863.
Mrs. McKean was the granddaughter of the company's founder, Charles H. Morse, and wife of Rollins College president Hugh F. McKean. In 1904, Morse purchased all of the Francis B. Knowles estate, thereby becoming the owner of almost half of Winter Park. This purchase included the Winter Park Company, a company chartered in 1885 and of which Knowles had been president. Morse changed its name to the Winter Park Land Company and immediately set out to clean up his new properties, laying sidewalks and paving roads.
A 1954 article from the Winter Park Herald describes the Winter Park Land Company's concerns with "insuring the orderly development of the city, maintaining its present beauty, and attracting to it people who are sympathetic to the cause of perpetuating and extending its great natural attractiveness." The company remains the oldest real estate firm in the "City of Homes."
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| Winter Park Land Company officers, H.W. Barnum (Secretary-Treasurer), Jeanette Genius McKean (President), and Harold A. Ward, Sr., in 1953. (Vice President) |
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