The people of Orlando love their Lake Eola — it is arguably the best part of downtown.
The city center, with its majestic fountain, swans boats and yes, swans, have become just as much of an icon to the city as the park itself.
However, unlike the large percent of the people population in Orlando, the swans did not just fly here and decide it was too nice to leave.
This is how the first swans of Orlando ended up on the shores of Lake Eola and became a symbol of the city.
A city going to the birds
The origin of the Lake Eola swans can be traced to 1910 when a few residents made a request to the city council to place two swans on the lake.
That request was granted, but not much is known about those two original swans, explains Melissa Procko, a research librarian with the Orange County Regional History Center.
Around the same time, a gentleman by the name of Charles Lord, who moved to Orlando from England in the 1880s, made a similar request to bring swans to Lake Lucerne.
“He always remembered seeing swans when he was in London, and he wanted to bring them to his home on Lake Lucerne,” said Procko.
However, there is a bit of discrepancy on exactly from where Lord’s swans came.
One account says they arrived from England, while another states a farm in Connecticut.
Regardless, they were shipped to Orlando, for the costly sum of $95.03, explains Procko.
The Tyrant of Lake Lucerne
Of the four swans Lord had shipped, one was a white swan named Billy, and he was an expert at making newspaper headlines with his antics of chasing dogs, cars, school children and attacking his offspring.
However, it was a murder that got the people of Orlando talking. After Billy drowned his mate, Sally Swan, he became known as The Tyrant of Lake Lucerne.
Billy also answered to the nicknames, The King of Lake Lucerne or Billy Bluebeard, during his twenty-plus year reign in Orlando.
The running gag was that he lived far longer than any swan was ever expected to.
It is hard to say for sure how long Billy actually lived. A Sept. 14, 1932 article in the Orlando Evening Reporter-Star reported Billy being on death’s door and claimed the bird was 75 years or older.
The age of Billy was given in a tongue-in-cheek manner as the article suggested that one would need to go see Charles Lord, the owner of the bird, for Billy’s official age.
Adding to lore, the swan survived his first brush with death.
A day later, a headline in the Orlando Evening Reporter-Star on Sept. 15, 1932, read ‘Old Billy Swan Stages a Comeback’ and claimed he was too mean to die.
A few months later, on Jan. 27, 1933, that statement proved false. The newspaper’s headline announced ‘Billy Swan, The Lake Ruler, Dies.’
However, like any good tale, the story of Billy did not end there.
Rather than spread Billy’s ashes along the shores of Lake Lucerne, a local citizen had him taxidermied and put on display in the window of Swan & Co. Dry Goods Store on Church Street.
A decade later in the 1940s, he was moved to a small display at the Orange County Courthouse.
Billy is still roosting here in Orlando today. While he is not currently in a permanent display, the stuffed Billy is securely nesting in a glass case at the Orange County Regional History Center storage facility.
Coming full circle
So what does Billy have to do with the Lake Eola swans if he lived on Lake Lucerne?
The story goes, when Charles Lord brought the four swans to Lake Lucerne, Billy was so unrelentingly territorial towards the two black swans, that Lord eventually had them moved to Lake Eola. This move added to the population of swans originally requested by residents in 1910.
Additionally, Billy sired numerous generations of cygnets during his reign which helped increase the number of swans around Lake Lucerne and Lake Eola.
Not only that, Billy gave the people of Orlando something to talk about. By the time the feathered tyrant died, the legacy of the swans had become cemented and he, a beloved fixture in Orlando.
Want to reach out? Email me at rpope@orlandosentinel.com.
