ORLANDO, Fla. – Drivers heading past Lake Gem Mary along Gatlin Avenue may be familiar with an old sealed-off building stashed away on the lakeside.
What drivers might not know is that this was once the site of an underwater Naval research laboratory.
The site sticks out like a sore thumb in the middle of the residential neighborhood, sparking questions about what it’s being used for nowadays and what could be hiding within.
But to figure that out, we have to head back to the 1830s, when this site — Fort Gatlin — was used as a military outpost during the Second Seminole War.
According to historian Jason Byrne, the location was picked thanks to the three nearby lakes (Lake Gem Mary, Lake Jennie Jewel, and Lake Gatlin), which set up natural chokepoints to help defend the outpost from attacks.
The Army later withdrew from the area in 1849, and Fort Gatlin later became the seat of Orange County in 1856. (Fun fact: Orlando Reeves, the eponymous militiaman who died during the war and for whom the city was named, is reportedly buried close by).
But even after the Second Seminole War was finished, the military still had plans for this site.
During World War II, the U.S. Navy set up the Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory near the former site of Fort Gatlin.
As the name indicates, the lab primarily focused on sonar research, and the program was made up of a low-frequency facility, a high-frequency facility, and an “anechoic tank” (a soundproofed space used to simulate environments at sea).
There was also a large pier that stretched into the lake, which was used to facilitate heavy equipment.
Vincent Benedetti, the former head of the anechoic tank facility, later discussed some of his research at the lab in a 2011 interview with Orlando Memory.
“A good part of my work also was ‘anechoic coating’… We were investigating rubber, which could be put on the exterior of a submarine so that if an enemy ship was pinging with sonar, there’d be no echo,” he explained.
But in 1996, the Navy decided to close down the lab, and the property was instead acquired in 2002 by Orange County Public Schools, which used it as an administration building.
“The basement at the Fort Gatlin property is 10 feet underground and does suffer from flooding issues when it rains…” Andy Orrell with OCPS told News 6. “Other than HVAC, electrical, etc., the only equipment left behind from the Navy were two small cranes that were built into the ground and couldn’t be easily removed.”
According to Orrell, the property was used as office space for the district’s Environmental Compliance and Sustainability Department, though the space was later considered unusable.
Orrell added that most of the equipment and materials were removed from the building, so there’s not much left inside.
Of course, that didn’t stop some people from breaking into the abandoned building, which prompted the district to seal it off.
“It was just a property that, for several reasons, just wasn’t going to be usable for what we needed it to be used for,” he said. “So it was just easier to shutter it up and lock it up. Keep it so that no local kids and vandals can try and take advantage of it.”
But instead of just leaving the building to rot, the district is trying to find a new owner to take the property over. However, to do so, the district will need to have its historic designation removed, Orrell stated.
“Although the property itself isn’t considered historically protected or significant, our agreement with the Federal government dictates that we need to get approval from the State Historic Preservation Offices before we can demolish any existing structures there (who we are currently working with for this permission),” Orrell later wrote.
In the meantime, you can read up on plenty of other strange places across Central Florida by visiting News 6′s Florida Fables page here.
You can listen to every episode of Florida’s Fourth Estate in the media player below:
Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.
