Set pieces
 
Sherry Boas
Sentinel Correspondent

July 7, 2002

When Warner Bros. came to Lake County in the mid-1990s to make the movie Rosewood, director John Singleton sought accuracy in portraying not only his characters but also the buildings in which they lived and worked during Florida's racially segregated 1920s.

More than 400 people worked on the movie project including many Central Florida residents.

Some local people were hired as extras. Others joined the production crew.

George Saunders, a Eustis resident who last year moved the high-profile Casa Feliz historic home in Winter Park, was involved with the production of Rosewood from the beginning.

"There were two sets for the movie, the Sumner and the Rosewood set. For months, the set director drove around Central Florida searching for old and abandoned buildings from the 1920s to use in the re-creation of the town of Rosewood," says Saunders who has spent 50 years moving and relocating historic buildings.

"When they found buildings and purchased them, my company was hired to move them to the film site."

The true story is centered on the small town of Rosewood and the horrible events that took place when Fanny Taylor (played by Catherine Kellner), a white housewife, falsely accused a black man of raping her. An angry white mob from the nearby sawmill town of Sumner responded to her allegation by setting fire to the town of Rosewood, massacring most of its 120 black inhabitants.

One man, John Wright (Jon Voight), the only white storekeeper in Rosewood, risked his life by teaming with a black drifter (Ving Rhames) to help women and children escape to safety.

About 20 old wooden buildings from metropolitan Orlando were used on the Rosewood set. All were burned during the re-enactment of the massacre. The production crew built 24 more buildings to represent either the small homes of the poor white sawmill workers from the town of Sumner or the somewhat larger homes of the white foremen at the mill.

"When production was over, we were hired to strike the set and clean it all up," Saunders says. He received the title for all the buildings that were left, including the 24 cabins from the Sumner set, and he later sold them at auction.

So what would anyone do with a newly built cabin that looks as if it's 80 years old? We caught up with several owners.

History blooms

Cathy and Bruce Brown were the first people to arrive at Saunders' auction. "Bruce and I had been searching for land where we could open a nursery specializing in Florida native plants," Cathy Brown says.

"We knew we would need a building to work out of when we finally found the right location for the nursery. When I read about the old Florida 'Cracker' buildings from the Rosewood movie that George was selling, I knew one of them would be perfect for us."

The Browns bought a 24-by-28-foot cypress cabin from Saunders for $9,000, one of the cabins used by a white foreman at the sawmill in Sumner. The price included having the building moved to their site and set up on concrete block footings. The building sat in Saunders' storage area for four months until the Browns found 15 acres on rural Montevista Road in Clermont for their business, B.B. Brown's Gardens.

"George told us that buildings like ours cost the movie crew $30,000 to build. I believe it with all the cypress wood and everything," says Cathy Brown.

The building, built out of materials that would have been used during the 1920s, has a cypress floor, walls and ceiling with a metal roof and 6-foot-wide front porch. The inside was unfinished.

"The outside was all they filmed of most of the houses," Saunders says. "So there was no need for the production crew to finish off the insides."

Although the Browns did not plan to use the building as a house, it still had to meet Lake County's building code requirements. Hurricane tie-downs were added, plumbing for a bathroom was installed and the building was wired for electricity. The Browns added porches around the three other sides to provide more space for plants to be displayed.

"We didn't add air conditioning or finish off the inside. You can still look up and see all the rafters, " says Bruce Brown. "It is used as an all-purpose building. We put cold-sensitive plants in it in the winter and use it as a classroom when we teach our National Wildlife Federation Habitat Steward classes throughout the year."

The building continually draws comments from the Browns' customers.

"Our customers love to see an old Florida building," says Cathy Brown. "They like to sit in the wooden rockers on the porch and look out at the demonstration gardens filled with native plants.

"It is the perfect type of building for this setting. We have a wide assortment of Florida native plants that have grown in this area for decades and a building that represents Florida's past."

Retirement home

Like the Browns, Carlene and Dick Yeager of Orange City were also drawn to the historic nature of the Rosewood movie buildings. Carlene, a nurse, and her husband, a plant manager for a general machinery company, were seeking a home in the Orange City area where they could settle in their retirement.

"We would drive up on the weekends from Fort Lauderdale where we lived and often stay in the cabins at Blue Spring State Park," Carlene said in a telephone interview from California where the two are spending a year traveling and working.

"When we heard about the houses that George had for sale, they sounded exactly like what we wanted. We decided to buy two and put them together to make one bigger house."

For two years, the Yeagers worked off and on during weekends converting the well-constructed but raw shells that they bought into a 960-square-foot work of art. Neither of the Yeagers had done any home construction work before.

Now their home is more than just a comfortable living space. It is also a picture-perfect display case for Carlene's vast collection of antiques.

"We did most of the work ourselves and had to learn as we went along how to do everything," says Carlene, who has collected antiques for the past 20 years.

"Friends from Fort Lauderdale often came up to help, and a local builder, Scott Dickerson, gave us a lot of good advice. So did the architect who drew up the plans that were necessary for us to get the building permits."

But getting those permits from Volusia County proved to be one of the Yeagers' greatest obstacles.

"It took five months to get it through the county's head we were allowed to do this," Carlene recalls. "The problem was that they didn't know what to call it. Was it a restoration project? A new home? An existing structure?"

Once it was decided that the house was to be permitted as a new home, the Yeagers were still not home free.

Although they planned to add electricity, plumbing and central heat and air, the Yeagers had not counted on needing to assure the county that the house was waterproof.

To do that, they were required to take off all the cypress wood siding, piece by piece, wrap the entire structure in black tar paper and then re-side it with the wood.

In addition to the normal hurricane tie-down requirements, they were required to add half-inch plywood and half-inch plasterboard to the inside walls to make sure the house was hurricane proof.

"It was an interesting challenge," says Carlene.

Guest house with history

By being involved from the beginning and owning the houses at the end, George Saunders was able to choose the "cream of the crop" when it came to keeping one of the Rosewood buildings for himself.

"Only one of the 'Cracker' houses was finished on the inside," Saunders says while seated on a green bench that swings from the porch rafters of his reclaimed Rosewood house.

"That was Fanny's house, the house that belonged to the white woman who started everything off by falsely accusing a black man of raping her. They filmed several scenes there so the two front rooms were finished by the production crew."

Saunders renovated the rest of the 480-square-foot structure in less than a month by adding a small kitchen and a bathroom complete with pedestal tub and sink.

The pine posts that supported the house on the movie set were replaced with brick piers that match the brick fireplace in the front room, and the rusted metal roof was repainted black.

The renovated building is used as a guesthouse on Magnolia Farm, the Saunders' history-laced homestead on County Road 44 in Eustis. Saunders and his wife, Alesandra, call it "The Gardener Cottage." It sits behind the Saunderses' own home, the former parish house from All Saint's Church in Winter Park that was also relocated to the property.

From Fanny's house in the movie Rosewood to a country guesthouse, this replica of a 1923 Florida Cracker house is about to undergo yet another transformation.

"It is has been booked for a number of TV commercials," Saunders says.

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