Trust, but verify
Research notes
Nothing on this site is written from memory. For each subject below you can see every source the neighborhood consulted, when it was read, and how settled the research is. If a page here makes a claim, this is where it came from — and where you can check it for yourself.
D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) — the Lake Cherokee neighborhood on film
The 1985 science-fiction film D.A.R.Y.L. used the Lake Cherokee neighborhood as one of its primary Orlando-area filming locations — including two houses on Euclid Avenue, the Poyntz-O'Neal House at 614 South Lake, and Lake Cherokee itself for the film's splashdown scene.
Lake Cherokee Historic District — designation, boundaries, and incentives
The 1981 local-historic designation that protects Lake Cherokee: criteria, boundaries, contributing-structure count, the City of Orlando's review process, and the rehabilitation incentives available to property owners.
Honeymoon Row — the 1880s newlywed homes on Lake Minnie
A cluster of 1880s newlywed homes along the west shoreline of what was then called Lake Minnie (sources count five to six). Two survive — the Poyntz-O'Neal House (1887) and the Gunby House (1887) — both anchors of the district designation. The Poyntz-O'Neal House also carries Central Florida's first women's-suffrage-meeting parlor.
Lake Cherokee — the lake's names through time
How a small lake on the southern edge of downtown Orlando came to be called Cherokee — by way of Eva (Lee family) and Minnie (Minnie Hall Poyntz), the city's first lakefront settler.
Notable Lake Cherokee residents
The people whose lives shaped the Lake Cherokee neighborhood and, in some cases, Orlando itself — Oliver T. Poyntz, William Russell O'Neal, Jessie Mallory Thayer O'Neal, and the Phillips family.