Church Street Station is a commercial development in downtown Orlando, Florida.
It is just east of I-4 and it includes both sides of Church Street and both sides of the CSX A Line Railroad Tracks. The area was developed around Orlando’s original train station.
The Old Orlando Railroad Depot was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and is now part of the Church Street Station commercial development. The steam engine adjacent to the depot is “Old Duke”, which was built in 1912 at the Baldwin Steam Engine and Iron Works in Baldwin, Ohio. It was used in the 1957 John Wayne movie, The Wings of Eagles.
Church Street Station is an entertainment district with many options for Dining, Drinking, Dancing, and Shopping. At one time it was touted as the fourth largest tourist attraction in the State of Florida. Since that time, Walt Disney World Resort and Universal Orlando Resort have built their own nighttime entertainment districts to keep the tourist dollars on their property.
Today, Church Street Station has evolved in to more of a downtown locals area with a few tourist sightings wanting to check out the local scene.
There is a revitalization feeling going on around Church Street Station with new Dance Clubs and Restaurants, condos, and apartments being built around the area.
The New Amway Center is just a couple of blocks west of the district on the other side of I-4. It is slated to open September 10th, 2010 and Church Street Station will be the closest existing Night-Life District to the new Arena. It will be a short walk under the I-4 overpass to and from the Arena.
If you want to experience some of Orlando’s glorious past with the old Train Depot and brick streets or just check out the local club scene, Church Street Station is a great place to go. Keep an eye out on our Event Calendar for upcoming events at Church Street Station Area.
History of Church Street Station
By 1886, the railroad and hotel magnet Henry Plant (Plant City was named after) decided it would be a good idea to control the railways from the east coast of Florida to the west coast. Most of the tourists at the time were traveling on Flagler’s railways going to the new resort cities of St. Augustine and Miami.
Henry Plant was developing Tampa as a resort city and wanted some of those tourist dollars to come to Tampa. For this reason, Henry Plant installed the railway over to Tampa and the Church Street Station in Orlando was completed in 1890. The old train depot was used for passenger trains from 1889 to 1926 and from 1926 to 1972 it was used as a ticket outlet and freight station.
Many of the buildings around the Church Street Station depot were built in the early 1900s. Among these buildings include the Bumby Hardware building in 1886, the Teele Building in 1924, the Leon building in 1920, the Orlando Hotel in 1924, and the Strand Hotel in 1922. The Bordello Room in the Strand Hotel section has long had a reputation of being haunted. We hope that does not scare you away.
By the early 1970s the area around the old train depot had deteriorated with the deserted train depot, drunks loitering around the Strand Hotel flophouse, and the downtrodden coming and going from the Goodwill store operating out of the Bumby Hardware space. In 1972 along came the 28-year-old whiz kid Bob Snow, that would change Church Street Station for good. Others saw a decrepit neighborhood and he saw a row of vintage buildings crying out for rehabilitation. Few people thought this young man with the outlandish handlebar mustache could turn this neighborhood into a fun nightlife entertainment district. It became a labor of love for Snow and his crew who would later call themselves the Good Time Gang. By the 1980s, they had turned the area into the 3rd largest tourist attraction in Orlando, Florida behind Walt Disney World and SeaWorld theme parks.