Winter Park’s first “Heritage Home” is on the market

If you’ve driven by the huge home with the wrap-around porch on New England Avenue in Winter Park and dreamed of living there, now is your chance.

Known as the Webster-Wagner Home, the ten bedroom estate at 433 East New England Ave. is listed for $4.3 million.

“It’s within walking distance to Park Avenue,” said listing agent Sergio De Oliveira, of Tree Realty . “Park Avenue is our Beverly Hills you don’t have anything as good as Park Avenue that I can think of in Central Florida, the dining, the strolling as you walk in the evenings.”

The home is directly across the street from the Winter Park Public Library and is about 350 feet away from the luxurious Alfond Inn at Rollins College.

De Oliveira’s clients bought the home in September 2016 and are selling it because they recently bought a $6.8 million lakefront home in The Vias. They’re just one on a long list of owners.

Built in 1905, and enlarged in the 1930s, the Webster-Wagner home got its name because of the family who built it. Information from the Winter Park Library archive says Pennsylvanian Albert Wagner built the home as a winter residence for his immediate and extended family. Jean Wallace Webster and Katherine Wallace Bradshaw, two of Wagner’s sisters-in-law, also used the home.

Initially, it had only five bedrooms and two bathrooms. Now it has ten bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, and two half baths. Previous owners renovated everything in 2009.

“[They] still kept the character of the front of the house [and it] is still the same from 1905,” De Oliveira told GrowthSpotter. “The office is all kept the same as it was back then, but the kitchen, dining area, the bathrooms, of course, have all been renovated.”

The home also has some features typical of the neighborhood.

“Like most of the houses in the area, it has the natural gas lanterns in front and in the pool area,” De Oliveira said.

The square shape and the porch were typical of Florida architecture in the early 1900s. Bishop Matthews, a retired Episcopalian bishop, added a library, a chapel, and several other rooms in the 1930s. The home is now 8,325 square feet and has 88 windows.

It was part of the 1998 Orlando Opera Guild’s Designer Show House and received the inaugural Heritage Plaque from the Winter Park Historical Association in 2001.

Unlike the new townhomes going up nearby, this house offers something special.

“The person who is going to buy this house his somebody who is driving by and says I want that house,” De Oliveira explained. “I compare it to somebody that’s looking for a yellow Ferrari, you know, something that’s specific that they’re looking for. I think the selling points of this house are the size and the walking distance to Park Avenue.”

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