Waterman's humble beginnings

Florida Hospital Waterman will soon be known as AdventHealth Waterman in 2019. It’s come a long way from the day the hospital began two towns removed from today’s present Tavares location.

The hospital had its beginning in an old Umatilla hotel in 1933.

The Lake County Medical Center opened in the north wing of Umatilla’s Rowebuilt Hotel and became Lake County’s first general hospital. It opened that January with 18 beds and six bassinets.

According to the late Emmett Peter, Harold Overheiser, Jr. was the first patient there on Jan. 11, 1933, and David Treadway was the first baby born there two weeks later.

The county hospital remained in the Rowebuilt until 1938, when it was moved into another closed hotel, the Fountain Inn in Eustis, which was owned by Frank Waterman of the Waterman Fountain Pen Company.

Construction of the 158-room Fountain Inn had been delayed by World War I and transportation problems caused further delays. A Fountain Inn promotional piece for the 1923 season told visitors the building wouldn’t be finished until late March of that year. The brochure invited visitors to make reservations for the following season.

The Spanish-style hotel was E-shaped, which afforded each of its rooms an outside view. Many of the rooms had baths, and all the rooms had running water.

President Calvin Coolidge dined at the hotel’s restaurant while staying at Mount Dora’s Lakeside Inn, according to Eustis historian Louise Carter. The hotel was also a business center.

The first floor facing Magnolia Avenue had 10 storefronts with everything from a grocery store and dentist office to a beauty parlor and drug store. The First State Bank occupied the corner, later the home of the Pink Elephant Thrift Shop.

William Kennedy’s History of Lake County, published in 1929, gave this description of the Fountain Inn: “The Fountain Inn is of Spanish style but the motif is subordinated to harmonize with the beauty of natural environment. The hotel is of four stories, basement and roof garden. There are 164 bedrooms with bath. There are palatial lobbies, sun parlors, writing rooms, reception rooms, small banquet halls, and all the refinements of a modern hotel. Eleven storerooms occupy the ground floor on the Magnolia Avenue side. There is an entrance to the hotel from Magnolia Avenue, but the principal entrance is on the opposite side, where one-third of the block is devoted to cement drives, flowers and shrubbery. Across the street the hotel grounds continue in a natural park, showing a bit of old Florida, with towering cypress trees, pines and stately palms.”

There was always plenty for the guests to do at the hotel and surrounding area. The 1923 advertisement boasted: “Located in the beautiful highlands of Lake County, Fla., the eye feasts on soul-satisfying tropical beauty in every direction, while the balminess of the air invites a natural relaxation of high-strung nerves and over-taxed bodies, making it at once the Mecca of health and pleasure seekers from all over the country.”

There was a miniature golf course and archery at Ferran Park, a nice garden park in front of the Fountain Inn, with a large fountain that was added after the hotel opened. Waterman also had a boardwalk built that meandered through a wooded area that is now the site of the local post office. The hotel was the social center of the town. In addition to dances, civic club functions and other affairs, high school proms were held there. The hotel began hurting financially, along with the rest of the country, after the Stock Market crash in 1929.

Then came the Bank Moratorium in 1932. The inn continued to struggle for the next three years. It was finally closed in 1936.

Waterman had suffered a stroke and offered the hotel to the Lake County Medical Center. In 1938, the fourth floor was turned into a hospital by a group of physicians headed by Dr. C.M. Tyre, Waterman’s personal physician. Though it became a hospital in 1938, visitors could still get hotel rooms and visit the dining room for the next 20 years as physicians struggled to keep the hospital doors opened.

Water is now a 269-bed hospital on U.S. Highway 441 in Tavares. It was purchased by Adventist Healthcare in 1992 and moved to its current location in 2003.