People scoffed when the City of DeLand told the people renovating DeLand’s Artisan Inn that they weren’t allowed to keep all the windows on the south side of the historic building.
The fire code limited how much wall surface could be glass, because those windows would be dangerously close, in case of a fire, to a building that could be built next door, the city said.
It was 1997. Pshaw, people said. There will never be a building that close to the Artisan Inn at 215 S. Woodland Blvd. A Sav-A-Lot grocery and a law office were next door, with a parking lot separating the buildings, and the landscape didn’t seem likely to change.
But the city held firm, and the owners of the 1927 Artisan Inn — John and Christ Soety — and the MainStreet DeLand Association got creative in response.
The Soetys agreed to donate the window spaces, and instead of simply filling the openings with masonry, with MainStreet’s help, the spaces were sold and DeLand muralist Courtney Canova painted faux windows on Hardie board panels that were installed in the spaces. Each panel was a mini-mural featuring a real DeLandite who could have been a hotel guest looking out over the town.
People paid $250 each to have friends and relatives depicted on the wall. That raised the needed funds for the mural, which was painted in 2000.
Fast-forward 24 years and, by golly, DeLand Commons rises five stories right next door to the south side of the Artisan Inn. There’s just more than 14 feet (a scant 11 feet if you measure from the columns at the front of DeLand Commons) between the buildings.
The still-under-construction upper-story apartments and ground-floor retail units are scheduled for occupancy some time this year.
The development raised questions in the mind of Susie Macon, a longtime MainStreet DeLand Association volunteer and now a member of MainStreet’s Design Committee.
Macon asked her fellow committee members: Will anyone be able to see these paintings, with another building right next door? Should we make some effort to have the murals moved to a place where they will remain visible?
The discussion that ensued raised yet another question: Who are these people in the windows, anyway?
That’s when Macon realized she had a mystery on her hands. Some of the portraits are of people she knows well, but others she didn’t recognize. Especially, there was a man in uniform on the east-facing back wall of the historic inn that no one seemed to know.
Macon began digging into the MainStreet DeLand Association’s official file on Downtown DeLand’s 16 or 17 murals (depending on how you count them). The file for the Artisan Inn portraits had a list of 20 names, but there are 21 portraits.
“Suddenly, there’s this man that looks kind of like a cop, and there’s nothing in the file,” Macon said.
The manila file is stuffed with handwritten notes, copies of checks, letters, notes and a list or two. The man in uniform didn’t seem to be named anywhere.
Was he a sheriff’s deputy? A DeLand Police officer? No one knew.
Then, one day, Macon’s phone rang. The caller was Mary Moyer, a longtime DeLand resident who’s been living in Washington state for six years. Her father-in-law was Dr. Otto Moyer, who many in DeLand will remember as a beloved veterinarian.
Mary Moyer’s sister JoAnn Flegert of Lake City was visiting in DeLand that day with her aunt, Nancy Hinson. Hinson and Flegert were trying to locate a portrait of Moyer’s grandfather, Marvin “Maxie” Parrot Thompson, that they thought existed in Downtown DeLand somewhere.
CLOSE NEIGHBORS — Tucked between these buildings in the 200 block of South Woodland Boulevard in DeLand is a 24-year-old mural comprising portraits of 21 area residents. The paintings came about in the late 1990s when city fire codes required that some of the windows on the Artisan Inn DeLand building be blocked. The mural, which was painted on Hardie-board panels at the home of artist Courtney Canova, was installed in 2000.
Flegert and Hinson asked Moyer, and Moyer called the person she knew who knows the most about Downtown DeLand: Susie Macon.
In her conversation with Moyer, Macon realized she had identified the mystery man. He had been the game warden for the DeLand area, which explained the uniform.
He may have been a mystery to the MainStreet DeLand Design Committee, but Moyer said her grandfather Maxie Thompson is well-remembered by his family, who still like to recall stories about him.
“All of his sons hunted,” Moyer said. “We all grew up in the woods.”
A favorite family story is of the time Thompson ran into one of his sons hunting without his license on his person. Thompson promptly gave his son a ticket.
“If I don’t give you a ticket, I can’t give anyone else a ticket,” Thompson is quoted as saying.
With the game warden identified, Macon realized she had an even bigger mystery on her hands — one that remains unsolved. The MainStreet DeLand Association had received 22 payments of $250, but there are only 21 portraits.
A scramble to pin down the identities of the people pictured ensued, and it appears that someone — possibly a 5-year-old girl (at the time) named Victoria Madison — was left off. Or, the young girl pictured in the fourth window portrait from the left on the second-floor windows is Victoria Madison, and Beth Azar Rosen was left off.
Online searches indicate the Madisons have moved away, and phone numbers listed for them were disconnected or unanswered. But, maybe Macon’s phone will ring again.
The next mystery is what effect the 180 apartments and additional commercial space will have on Downtown DeLand. Expecting a boost to the economy of the central business district, the DeLand City Commission granted tax incentives to the developer, Atlantic Housing Partners, that could be worth up to $3.5 million.
Wayne Carter, executive director of the MainStreet DeLand Association, is hopeful.
“Statistics show that people who live Downtown will spend about 60 percent of their disposable income Downtown,” Carter said. “This will be their neighborhood. They’ll walk Downtown and spend their money.”
City officials expect DeLand Commons to pay, at first, tens of thousands annually into the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) — a special fund for Downtown DeLand projects and improvements. The property’s tax bill will be hundreds of thousands a year once the tax break expires.
The closest neighbor is Artisan Inn DeLand, owned by Hina Patel and her sister Sarah Patel. So far, Hina Patel said, the developer has helped with sandbags to stem the flow of stormwater flowing toward the historic hotel from the construction site.
“They’re trying to be nice neighbors,” Hina Patel said.
As for the effects on parking, her bottom line, noise and other concerns, she said, she and her sister are in wait-and-see mode. Meanwhile, the city anticipates beginning to award certificates of occupancy for the project in June.
Yes, the game warden is my grandfather. I remember when my grandmother paid to have him painted. She was thrilled to see him there. Telling me how wonderful it looked. The painting has been on my fb for years. Thank you for letting people know who that man is. Thanks to Mary (my cousin) for filling them in.