The hotel, accomodating 400 guests, opened on January 1, 1886, on the site bounded by Osceola Avenue and Lake Osceola at the eastern end of New England Avenue.

Wagons, carriages and bicycles were the only mode of local transportation at that time.   The horse car, shown at the right of the photograph in front of the hotel porch, traveled on rails from the train depot to the hotel.   It brought passengers who came to Winter Park in the winter to escape the snow up North!

The hotel burned to the ground in September 1902.   In 1912, a new Seminole Hotel was built.   That hotel was on East Webster Avenue and Lake Osceola.   The hotel was torn down in 1970.