Top: Cherry Plaza Hotel in the 1950
Bottom: Post Parkside Aparments in 2013
Previous posts on the Cherry Plaza Hotel:
Cherry Plaza Hotel, Part 3
Today the former Lee’s Lakeside site is under renovations for a World of Beer
After originally opening in the fifties as an apartment hotel, Eola Plaza, and converted into a hotel by the end of the decade, the Cherry Plaza Hotel came full circle and converted back to apartments. It operates today as Post Parkside apartments.
Before the boom of apartment and condo life in Downtown Orlando, this was one of the few somewhat urban style apartment buildings in the area. Especially in the 1990’s, the proximity to Lake Eola and the reasonable rents made it a sort of funky, eclectic place to live. In fact in 1992, the Orlando Sentinel referred to it as “Downtown’s Tower of Funkiness”. Today, it looks like a small player surrounded by new condominium and highrise apartments.
On the ground level facing the lake, Lee’s Lakeside operated as one of Orlando’s most popular restaurants from the 1980’s until it closed in 2005. The space has been an unsuccessful restaurant or two since then, and is currently being remoded for World of Beer’s newest location.
orlando retro 
My dad, Garry A Boyle AIA, was the architect who designed the Eola Plaza. He commuted to Orlando from Tampa to supervise the construction by Paul Smith Construction Co. It was the tallest building in Orlando at the time, and, according to my dad, the first monolithic concrete building in Florida. He returned home on weekends, and I still remember the present he brought me when he came home on my ninth birthday weekend.
Wonderful times 1960! It was my 11th floor home facing east (so I could watch those launches from “The Cape”. In fact my team pretty much had the whole 11th floor!