Neilson House
FL 325, Windsor, FLThe Neilson House in Windsor, Florida is so named because of its most recent owners, Gerald and Antoinette Neilson, who both died in 1971. The land was originally sold out of the Arredondo Grant to R. H. Kelley in 1885. An 1885 description of Windsor stated that the town was "originally an old cotton plantation, settled 39 years ago (1846) by cotton planters". It further stated that the settlers were white and from New York, Maine, Illinois, and Ohio. The name Kelley is mentioned among its prominent persons in 1885. The population in Windsor at this time was approximately 75. The town continued to grow as a result of the citrus industry until the 1894-95 freeze killed so many of the trees. Failing to recover from this economic disaster, Windsor is today a sleepy little community containing many elegant residences.
The Neilson House is a singularly fine example of a style of architecture that did not flourish in Florida. Andrew Jackson Downing, in his Architecture of Country Houses, states that "this architecture (referring to the so-called Stick Style) is not regional, but truly national, and may even be considered to exhibit the major characteristics of a fully developing architectural style". He further referred to the Stick Style as "the real vernacular architecture of the mid-nineteenth century" and the Neilson House in Windsor is one of Florida's few surviving examples dating from this period.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.