By: Christian Switzer

The connection between College Park and Ivanhoe Village is discussed often in present-day Orlando. The North Orange Neighborhood is recognized by the City of Orlando and has a distinct history that calls back to the deep-rooted connections between the two Main Street districts. Today, a small section of the North Orange Neighborhood is actually the Rosemere Historic District and on October 21, 2009, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. This register is recognized by the US Department of the Interior.

Rosemere is located at East Vanderbilt Street, Cornell Avenue, North Orange Avenue, and East Harvard Street. The neighborhood currently consists of only about fifty-one buildings.

This small and hidden section of the residential neighborhood was the origin of the College Park name—as the college-themed street names made selling houses easy for developers and put the neighborhood in high demand. In 1965, Interstate 4 split a portion of Rosemere and College Park from the rest of the neighborhood and created this outcropping that holds the original historic names of College Park streets, including Yale, Cornell, and Harvard. Walter Washington Rose, the developer of the Rosearden neighborhood east of Downtown Orlando, began the Rosemere subdivision in December 1921.

Grace Hagedorn was dedicated to historic preservation. We can thank for her for submitting Rosemere to the National Register of Historic Places. You can find many of the classic College Park style homes in this small neighborhood including American Foursquare, Bungalow, Colonial Revival, Dutch-Colonial Revival, Minimal Traditional, Mission, Modern Movement, Ranch and Tudor Revival architectural styles. Though we are now split by the ever-enlarging I-4, College Park and Ivanhoe Village are sister districts with deep roots.