Lake Eola Heights: Brick Streets, a Sinkhole Lake and the Best Front Yard in Orlando
Orlando's first historic district wraps 38 blocks of brick streets and century-old houses around the city's signature lake. How the neighborhood's two halves — the archive and the front yard — work, and how to do them well.
3 minute read
Most Orlando neighborhoods are one thing. Lake Eola Heights is two, stitched together at the water’s edge. North and east of the lake stand some 38 blocks of brick streets and century-old houses — Orlando’s first historic district. South and west of those streets lies the neighborhood’s other half: Lake Eola Park itself, 43 acres of green wrapped around a 23-acre sinkhole lake, with the downtown skyline standing over it like a backdrop the residents get for free. Live here and your morning run, your Sunday market and your evening walk all happen in the same ten-minute radius. Visit well and you can borrow that life for a day.
The archive: brick streets and old houses
The residential half of the neighborhood grew out of citrus ground. Jacob Summerlin — cattle baron, first city council president, the man who helped put Orlando on the map — bought land around the lake in the late 1800s, and after the Great Freeze of 1894–95 killed the groves, the land turned residential. What rose between about 1890 and 1940 was one of the most architecturally varied streetscapes in Florida: Colonial Revival and Craftsman houses, Mediterranean Revival and Mission Revival flourishes, Art Deco and Minimal Traditional cottages, and plain frame farmhouses, much of it along brick-paved streets under a dense live-oak canopy.
By the 1980s that fabric was worth fighting for, and residents did. Their association petitioned the city, and in 1989 Lake Eola Heights became Orlando’s first local historic district; in January 1992 it joined the National Register of Historic Places, with 487 contributing buildings counted in the nomination. Our walking guide to the district reads the streets house by house. The short version: slow down, look at porches, and remember these are people’s homes, not a museum set.
The front yard: the lake
The park half needs less explanation and rewards more repetition. A 0.9-mile sidewalk loops the water — the neighborhood’s track, dog run and evening promenade in one. The Linton E. Allen Memorial Fountain, built in 1957 and now the official icon of the City of Orlando, fires its plume over the middle of the lake and lights up in changing colors after dark. Swan boats pedal out from the west shore, the Walt Disney Amphitheater hosts concerts and movies, and on Sundays the Orlando Farmers Market takes over the southeast corner, as it has in one form or another since 1987. We profile the park in full in our Lake Eola Park profile.
The South Eola cluster
Where the neighborhood meets South Eola, the magazine’s rankings bunch up in a single block. At 420 East Church Street you’ll find YogaMix Orlando, No. 2 in our Yoga & Pilates rankings with a Net Score of 98.1, and a few doors down The Greenery Creamery, No. 3 for ice cream at 92.1. Around the corner at 101 Lake Avenue, Velvet Nail Bar holds No. 10 in our nail salon rankings (89.1), and the Orlando Farmers Market itself ranks No. 6 among the region’s farmers markets at 88.7. Every one of them is plotted on our Top Spots Map. Our wellness roundup and South Eola eating guide take the cluster apart piece by piece.
How to do the neighborhood well
Come early, on foot. The loop is at its best before the heat — herons on the shoreline, rowers of retirees and stroller brigades sharing the path, the fountain against a pink sky. Sundays are the neighborhood’s set piece: market first, then a lap, then ice cream on Church Street. Evenings belong to the west shore, when the amphitheater may be tuning up and the fountain starts its color rotation over dinner at the park’s own grill. If you want the hour-by-hour version, our earlier Lake Eola weekend itinerary runs the full two days. However you slice it, the rule is the same one residents live by: the lake is not a sight to check off. It is the neighborhood’s front yard, and you are welcome to use it like one.
Photo: Benoît Prieur, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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