WEST ORANGE TIMES & OBSERVER
OrangeObserver.com
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 2016
H. Sadler, Luther W. Tilden, H.A. Connell, A.J. Willis, Arthur W. Hurley, Charles F. Mather-Smith and Gus S. Hall. It started providing power to Winter Garden in April 1920. TILDENVILLE ELEMENTARY
A two-story frame schoolhouse was erected in 1905 in Tildenville on land donated by the J.A. Willis family. A larger brick building was later built on the same site to serve Winter Garden and Oakland, and in 1918, it was expanded. A new facility was constructed in 1964. The school was replaced in 2006. BRICK ROAD
It spans little more than a halfmile from Plant Street to Tildenville School Road, but it is a significant piece of history. Brick Road is exactly that — a .6-mile historic remnant of a brick-laid road, Highway 22, that once took travelers from the Orange-Lake county line all the way to Orlando’s Washington Street. An Orange County historic marker will be placed at the intersection of Brick and Tildenville School roads. HOMES
Tildenville School Road was a popular place for Tilden family homes. Luther F. built his first home there in about 1878. The second home he built, in around 1905, was just south of his original house. His son, Luther W. and his wife, May Wise, were married May 4, 1893. Nine children were born to the couple in the palatial home he built at 940 Tildenville School Road on 14 acres surrounded by azaleas, oaks, palms and a formal rose garden. The house was later given the name “Meadow Marsh.” It recently served as a Victorian bed and breakfast. In 1999, HGTV filmed a segment, called “If Walls Could Talk,” at Meadow Marsh. The historic home, currently set on 2.31 acres, was sold in November 2015 for $725,000. J.S. “SHORTY” REDDICK’S MARKET
Everyone in the area was familiar with Jacob S. “Shorty” Reddick and his market, which stood on the northeast corner of Oakland Avenue and Tildenville School Road. It now houses Page’s Pastiques antiques shop. Reddick’s supplied the Tildenville neighborhood with meats, groceries and notions for many years and also cashed the checks of workers who labored in the area’s citrus groves. Reddick lived
across the road on the northwest corner in the large brick house that replaced the Victorian Clarence G. Tilden home that once stood on the spot. Reddick, 70, was killed during a possible armed-robbery attempt at his store in February 1970. He had been shot in the chest. He was still clutching an empty .38-caliber revolver when police found his body; his six bullets were later found inside his store. TILDENVILLE MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH
Tildenville Missionary Baptist Church, 233 Massey Ave., Winter Garden, was established in 1939. The church organized the Tildenville Child Care Center in 1971 to give working parents a safe place to take their preschool-age children. Members of the church purchased the 9.5-acre Avalon School property. Alice Siplin started a thrift shop to raise money to get the daycare started. Amanda Booker became the director later that year. She said in the first four months of her job, there were no funds for food so she bought it with her own money. Financial strains ultimately led to its closing in 2004. POSSUM HOLLOW
The small neighborhood of Possum Hollow is nearly indistinguishable to drivers traveling Avalon Road just south of West Colonial Drive. It was originally
part of south Tildenville but was separated from that neighborhood by Florida’s Turnpike when it was built in the early 1960s. The neighborhood suffered extensive damage during the February 1998 tornado that tore through the area. Many of Possum Hollow’s older wooden dwellings were destroyed. SOUTH TILDENVILLE/ HARLEM HEIGHTS
Mabel McKinnon opened the Black Lake subdivision along the east shore of Johns Lake in 1937. A black settlement emerged there during the 1930s and 1940s. Nearly 20 dwellings, typical of labor housing built for citrus grove laborers, remain near the intersection of Avalon Road and the turnpike. Through the years, the Silver Moon grocery and J’s Heritage Community Store have offered residents a place to buy food and hang out. In the 1980s, the city of Winter Garden and the town of Oakland both wanted Tildenville for their reserve growth zone for future expansion, but the results of a questionnaire mailed out to Tildenville residents from the Orange County Planning Department revealed most responders wanted to be excluded from both municipalities. In 2012, a plumber installing pool piping in a newer subdivision on Avalon found mummified fragments of two skulls and news-
paper scraps dating to 1978. The former migrant-worker housing camp was located on this land, once known as Harlem Heights. For more than 30 years, Ralston O’Connor managed this village of wooden barracks occupied by generations of orange pickers. Freezing temperatures in the mid-1980s wiped out the citrus industry and ended the migrants’ work here. In the last decade, Orange County started a landmark neighborhood revitalization program to assist residents living in older transitioning neighborhoods. Nine Safe Neighborhood communities, including Tildenville, were designated. The Tildenville Safe Neighborhood Action Plan calls for partnering citizens with community stakeholders to preserve and stabilize neighborhoods. The idea is to identify the community’s core issues and then recommends projects and programs to address them. Tildenville Park opened on Shongi Avenue in 2003. The neighborhood park was funded by Orange County’s ReNEW Initiative. County projects also have included road improvements, the demolition of several unsafe vacant buildings and, currently, the addition of new LED lights.
Clockwise from top left: This house, built at 1284 Brick Road, around 1893, still stands across from Tildenville Elementary. The man by the horse is Edward Hobart Willis, who married Carrie Wise in 1893. The house is also known as Miss Annie’s House. Annie Connell was a principal and teacher at the OaklandWinter Garden School and later at Tildenville Elementary. Betty and Katherine Wade were baptized at Black Lake in Tildenville. This is an aerial view of the South Lake Apopka Citrus Growers Association packinghouse property. Six members of the Tildenville basketball team were photographed, presumably in 1925 because of the “THS -25-” written on ball. The home of the school’s principal, Annie Connell, is in the background.
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