Swampy’s #Florida Postcards: The Imperial House, Winter Park, circa 1970.
Here’s ‘The Imperial House’ that used to be on US 17 & 92 in Winter Park. Notice the huge sign in the shape of a crown. It lit up at night and was something to see while driving in the area. This was one of the fine dining restaurants in Central Florida with the main restaurant in the front and bar in the back. A hallway connected the two had a series of caricatures of local celebrities drawn by Bob McGrath and a female caricaturist. In the restaurant section was a live pianist, who would play requests.
Though many locals went to the restaurant, it was the ‘Mount Vernon Inn‘ across U.S. 17 & 92 that fed The Imperial House with hungry guests during it’s existence.
The restaurant closed around 1990 and demolished in the mid-’90s. A ‘Houston’s Restaurant’ was built in it’s placed and was replaced in the past few years with ‘The Hillstone Restaurant’.
Thank you for this photo. Do you have any postcards or pictures of the restaurant? My wifes grandfather LV Bledsoe owned the Mt Vernon Inn and restaurant. Would love to surprise her with a picture or postcard or anything about it as she has childhood memories of both. Thanks.
I’ve got quite a number of items, including postcards, of the Mount Vernon. My grandparents would stay there and I learned to swim in the pool. 🙂
I would be pretty sure Mr. Bledsoe has many items of the hotel. Those were plentiful about Winter Park for the past few decades. Less so, these days mostly due to the lack of respect of our Florida history. An example: Look what happened to the Mount Vernon!
If only we could get “Investors” to actually invest in our communities for the good of the community and not for themselves, our state could thrive again.