ORLANDO, Fla. – Beyond the rowing facilities, ball fields and playgrounds, Orlando‘s Lake Fairview Park has a bit of history hiding within.
Next time you’re at the park near Lee Road and Orange Blossom Trail, look down because you’re probably standing on a piece of history.
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The parking lot is constructed with antique bricks — manufactured across the Southeastern U.S. — some of which over 100 years old.
The lot was constructed sometime in the 60s, according to an Orlando Sentinel article from April 11,1960, that partially read, “The grounds will be closed until the brick parking lot is in place” and “Pat says the weather, the horse show, the weather and the boat show have delayed finishing the lakefront facilities.”
I reached out to the city of Orlando to try to find out why they used these bricks and how they came to own them but was told the records no longer exist.
Some of the bricks at the park come from the following companies:
Graves Brick Company was founded in 1901 and supplied bricks for founder William H. Graves’ construction projects, including the construction of buildings and vitrified type for street and road construction. Graves would later combine the brick and paving business, which he closed around 1920.
Copeland-Inglis Shale Brick Company was located in Birmingham, Alabama, and made bricks from 1899-1920. In the early 1900s, the company shipped millions of their bricks to the Tampa area to make roads before pavement was commonly used.
Southern Clay Manufacturing Company was in the town of Robbins in Scott County, Tennessee. It was founded as the Tennessee Paving Brick Company in 1889 and the company sold its Robbins operation to the Southern Clay Manufacturing Company of Jersey City, New Jersey. The last bricks the company produced were in 1937. The Second Annual Report for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Mines for Tennessee in 1893 noted this fun nugget: All the Chattanooga streets that are paved with brick – except Seventh Street – were paved with the product of this company.
According to Brian Trimble, Director of Industry Development and Technical Services at the International Masonry Institute, the bricks at Lake Fairview Park are called vitrified brick pavers and are harder burned than a normal face brick used in a wall or denser than some of the newer pavers that are used today.
“Back in the early 1900′s as car traffic increased they needed better roads on which to drive. Brick pavers were durable and created a better surface than the gravel or dirt roads that were common at that time. As asphalt and concrete become more reliable their use increased and the use of brick pavers decreased (probably in the 1930s),” Trimble said.
And if you’re really into bricks like Trimble, there is an International Brick Collectors Association that you can join. You’re welcome.
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Wait, there’s more Lake Fairview history to tell. Have you ever heard of the lake’s spouting well, Central Florida’s own “geyser.”
According to the Orange County Regional History Center, in the early 20th century at the Davis-McNeill farm on the lake’s south side, water started to erupt 75-100 feet into the sky every six minutes.
Orlando officials had faced problems because the city’s lakes often overflowed , a particular problem for farmers near Lake Fairview, who found their fields flooded.
The solution was to drive pipes hundreds of feet into the ground in search of underground passageways into which to drain excess water.
Apparently at Lake Fairview, one pipe near the lake’s edge sat inches below the water’s surface. The “geyser” would shoot up when air pressure built up in a natural underground chamber, reached a critical point and rushed up out of the pipe.
Farm manager R.D. Eunice saw an opportunity and started asking spectators for a small admission fee to witness the spouting well.
Sadly, the pipe was capped in the 1930s, and this part of weird Orlando history was no more.
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