Your Guide to Buying a Home in Doctor Phillips, FL

Buying a Home in Doctor Phillips, Florida

Doctor Phillips is located in Orange County

In Orlando, the name heralds a Space Age high school and marks the entrances to a half-dozen small parks. It names other schools, buildings and avenues, even a community. It is on the letterheads announcing grants and gifts to diverse charities. It is a name woven deeply into the fabric of Central Florida history. For all this it is a name that has a beguiling mist of small-town secretiveness about it.

The Phillips, among Orlando's first millionaire families, amassed their wealth Quickly in a highly visible industry. They shared their wealth - but for all their influence, they drew the line at becoming anything approaching a public presence in the city. Doc Phillips moved his family to Orlando in 1905 and died in 1959. During his life time he amassed land holdings. Doc had already acquired considerable citrus acreage in Orange and several other counties when he began to put together his showcase Sand Lake property in southwest Orlando in the early 1920's. The block of land he eventually owned extended form Conroy Road on the north to the south end of the Sand Lake Chain, encompassing all of what is now Bay Hill, Orange Tree, Sand Lake Hills and Turkey Lake Park.

Doc hatched the Sand Lake Development Idea in the late 1940's a time when it was still not considered shortsighted to establish a small 4,000 or so people self-contained, self-sustaining, agriculturally oriented township. It would have a little post office, fire department, grocery store and it would be called Dr. Phillips.

Dr. Philips at the present is a community 40,000 people, living along a chain of lakes that encompasses two golf courses, two country clubs, a cluster of upscale condos and townhouses, a shopping center, post office, high rise office complex, Olympic swimming pool, two schools, a dozen tennis courts and homes ranging from $150,000 and beyond. All of this is built on land either sold by the family corporation for development or land still owned and managed by Dr. Phillips Inc.

Doc Philip Phillips, Founder of the community of Dr. Phillips. Under his hand, the wilderness bore fruit. The Phillips family brought citrus to Central Florida in a big way...... and culture.... and a whole lot of mystery.