The Leedy Lifetime Works Tour celebrates the architect Gene Leedy, his architecture, and his influence on the Winter Haven community. 

As part of the nationally organized Main Street Program, founded by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Main Street Winter Haven is a comprehensive downtown revitalization program that encourages economic development within the context of historic preservation.  It is the importance of historic preservation to our community’s unique identity that prompted Main Street Winter Haven to recognize and appreciate Winter Haven’s incomparable treasures – the architecture of Gene Leedy.

In March 2006, Main Street Winter Haven was awarded an $18,000 Historic Preservation Community Education Grant to assist with the Leedy Lifetime Works Tour.  As a result of the work of our amazing Creative Team, the project includes a self-guided tour brochure and an accompanying audio tour and website.

The tour begins in the heart of downtown Winter Haven and spreads into the neighboring residential areas.  Although the tour was originally conceived as a walking tour within the core downtown, it was quickly recognized that the most comprehensive and advantageous way to see and appreciate the best of Leedy’s commercial and residential structures is via an automobile with an accompanying self-guided audio tour.

It is our intent to be good stewards of these buildings by educating, enlightening, and increasing public awareness.  By so doing, we also hope to prevent what has tragically occurred throughout the United States – historic structures lost to the bulldozer and replaced by a monotonous mega mansion or a homogenous glass highrise.

This project has been financed in part with historic preservation grant assistance provided by the Bureau of Historic Preservation, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State, assisted by the Florida Historical Commission.