This week’s photo is a bit of a mystery! Can you help the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation solve it? ‘Alice Roper’ is written on the front, apparently referring to the tiny girl in the baby carriage on Plant Street on a hot afternoon. She was born on New Year’s Day 1919 to Roy and Nannie Roper.
Behind Alice, to the east, a woman in a period skirt is walking with an umbrella as protection against the sun. Across the road, on the north side of Plant Street, stands the water tank used for filling railroad steam engines. Just east of it, in the back, stands what was most likely James Lafayette Dillard’s service garage, which was situated just northwest of the intersection formed by Main and Plant streets. A boxcar is seen in front of a white structure, which may have been one of ‘city father’ Arthur Bullard Newton’s citrus packinghouses. The short tree past the packinghouse seems to be the tree seen in many photographs of the Shelby Hotel, which was built in 1915. But, if Alice was born in 1919, why is the Shelby Hotel not visible? Just past this tree is the old ACL Railroad station, a wooden structure built in 1906 and replaced by the present brick depot in 1918 — why is that not shown? Is it possible that the baby is not Alice Roper? Contact the WGHF at 407-656-3244 if you can help shed light on this challenging photograph.