Long before Winter Park had chef's counters and craft cocktail menus, it had a lakeside dining room that could make an ordinary Sunday feel like a coronation. Imperial House sat on the edge of Lake Killarney, treated prime rib like royal business, and sent warm cinnamon rolls to the table while an organist kept the room humming.
For roughly 33 years, this was where greater Orlando went to make a fuss. Anniversaries, promotions, a grandmother's birthday, a business lunch that absolutely had to go well. Then, with surprisingly little fanfare, it vanished. By the spring of 1986, the bulldozers had come and gone, and a newspaper columnist was left writing about memories instead of reservations.
So grab a cup of coffee (it pairs nicely with cinnamon rolls) and settle in. Here's how a 1953 restaurant on a small Winter Park lake grew into Imperial House, who kept the crown polished, and what's left of the kingdom today.
Table of Contents
From Sunset Terrace to Morrison's Imperial House
The building went up in 1953 on the shore of Lake Killarney and opened under a breezier name: Sunset Terrace. Given the view across the water at dusk, it was truth in advertising.
Two years later, in 1955, the place traded its sunset for a scepter. That Morrison's name on the sign was real business, not a coincidence. Most locals knew Morrison's for its cafeterias, but a business history of Morrison's executive Arthur Outlaw lists Morrison Imperial House Restaurants among the company's operations, right alongside those cafeterias and its other hospitality ventures. Same company, very different dress code.
Here's where the record gets a little fuzzy. Over time, the Morrison's prefix fell away and the place became simply Imperial House, with its manager, Dick Higley, eventually taking over as owner. Exactly when that ownership changed hands, and on what terms, hasn't surfaced in the available sources. What's clear is that by the time most locals were booking tables, both the name on the door and the man greeting guests inside felt thoroughly hometown.
An Address Every Local Knew
The restaurant sat at 129 South Orlando Avenue, on the stretch of U.S. 17-92 that runs through Winter Park. A surviving advertising postcard places it directly across the highway from the Mount Vernon Motor Lodge, which gives longtime residents a handy way to pin it on their mental map.
That lakeside lot was the whole point. Diners came for the food, but they lingered for the water, with linen-covered tables and polished silver setting a tone that felt special without feeling stuffy. For a generation of local families, Imperial House was the automatic answer to the age-old question of where to go when the occasion called for something nicer than the usual weeknight spot.
One quick clarification for newer residents: the historic restaurant has no connection to The Imperial, the wine bar whose Winter Park outpost opened on Morse Boulevard in 2018 and later announced a move to Park Avenue in 2024. Same regal word, entirely different chapter of Winter Park dining.
The Higley Family Ran the Room
If the building was the stage, Dick Higley was the star. He spent 26 years at the restaurant, first as manager and then as owner, and regulars remembered him less as a businessman than as the world's most attentive host. During Sunday dinner, he made a habit of stopping at tables to chat, and he wasn't above sitting down with a family for a few minutes. Imagine the owner of a fancy restaurant today pulling up a chair to ask how the kids are doing. That was a regular Sunday here.
It was a family operation in the truest sense. His wife, Donna Higley, worked as a hostess. As their sons, Mark and Rick, grew older, they sometimes stepped in as managers. For plenty of diners, a night at Imperial House felt a little like being invited into the Higleys' own dining room, just with better silverware.
The staff had serious staying power, too. Helen Burns worked there for 21 years, a remarkable run in an industry famous for revolving doors. By 1986, she had moved on to the Orlando Country Club, carrying a bit of that old-school polish into another corner of the local hospitality world.
Prime Rib, Cinnamon Rolls and That Dessert Cart
Every great restaurant has a signature, and here the signature wore a crown. Prime rib was the star of the royal-themed advertising, and vintage postcard copy also promoted a cocktail lounge, so an evening could start with a drink before the main attraction arrived.
Ask former regulars, though, and many will skip right past the beef to gush about the cinnamon rolls. Those, along with dessert carts and steady refills of coffee, gave a meal at Imperial House its unhurried rhythm. This was not a grab-a-tray cafeteria. It was full-service dining, where nobody was rushing you toward the door.
For plenty of kids, the dessert cart was the real main event, a slow parade of temptation that rolled up just as the grown-ups settled in with their coffee. Negotiations were held. Promises about finishing vegetables were made, and occasionally kept.
One small heartbreak for anyone hoping to recreate the full spread at home: no complete, reliably dated menu from the Winter Park location has turned up, so specific prices, portion sizes and the full lineup of entrées remain a delicious mystery.
Dinner Came With a Soundtrack
Live music set the mood. Diners remember organ music drifting through the room, and a family obituary backs that up. It identifies Wesley Rosen Sr. as a musician who played organ and piano during dinner at Morrison's Imperial House in Winter Park.
It's a small detail that says a lot. A restaurant that keeps a musician playing through dinner is selling an evening, not just a plate of food. At Imperial House, that evening came with keys and pedals beneath the clink of silverware, and for families who dressed up for Sunday dinner, the music turned a weekend meal into a small occasion.
Senators, Movie Stars and an Evangelist Walked In
For a restaurant beside a busy highway on a modest lake, the guest list was downright dazzling. The 1986 Orlando Sentinel retrospective named a striking mix of famous people reported to have dined there:
- Political figures: Eleanor Roosevelt, Everett Dirksen and Paula Hawkins
- Entertainers: Vincent Price, Danny Thomas and Edgar Bergen
- A preacher and a showman: Billy Graham and circus animal trainer Clyde Beatty
To be fair, those are reported visits. The newspaper didn't list dates or claim each one was a regular. Still, picturing Vincent Price working through a slab of prime rib while the organ played is hard to resist. So is imagining Billy Graham and Clyde Beatty in the same dining room, even on different nights.
Local notables got their moment in the spotlight, too. Framed caricatures of well-known patrons hung near the rear entrance, including Orange County Sheriff Dave Starr and Paula Hawkins. It was a hometown hall of fame, displayed right where regulars passed on their way to the table, and a rare chance to see the county sheriff rendered in cartoon form.
Where Winter Park Did Business and Socialized
Imperial House wasn't only a special-occasion splurge. It worked as a weekday gathering place, too. The May 1960 Dartmouth Alumni Magazine listed it as the meeting spot for Winter Park alumni, who held a monthly luncheon there on the last Tuesday of each month. A standing date like that says the room was reliable, central and comfortable enough for a crowd that kept coming back.
The restaurant even turns up in federal paperwork. On February 15th, 1971, Clay T. Whitehead, director of the federal Office of Telecommunications Policy, had lunch on his itinerary with telephone-company representatives in the restaurant's Fireside Room before an afternoon engineering briefing in Altamonte Springs. Translation: the place had a named private dining room, and it was trusted with business lunches that came with an agenda.
Fashion had its moment as well. An obituary for a local woman known as "Boots" recalls that she organized and modeled in tea-room fashion shows at Dick Higley's Imperial House. Her online memorial is a lovely reminder that lunch there could double as a runway.
The Last Course
The ending is less tidy than the beginning. What's certain is that the building had been bulldozed by May 9th, 1986, when the Sentinel published its farewell, and the columnist had already seen the empty site. What remains unconfirmed is the exact date the last prime rib was carved and why the restaurant closed.
At the time, the writer guessed that a bank might eventually take over the lakeside property. That was speculation, not an announced plan, and the record doesn't pin down what occupies the exact parcel today. For a place that hosted so many celebrations, it slipped away with surprisingly little paperwork. When Imperial House disappeared, it also took with it a style of dining that was already growing rare by the mid-1980s: the long, leisurely, dressed-up dinner served by people who knew your name.
Saving What's Left
These days, the restaurant lives on mostly in the hands of collectors. Postcards and matchbooks carrying its name, address and royal branding still change hands, with vintage matchbooks and other keepsakes popping up in online listings. Each one is a pocket-size time capsule of mid-century Winter Park.
For locals who want to play detective, the best lead sits in downtown Orlando. The Orange County Regional History Center's Joseph L. Brechner Research Center lists Imperial House Restaurant in the business section of its photographic collections guide. The guide doesn't say how many images exist or when they were taken, but it's the most promising place to start.
Plenty of pieces are still missing: the 1953 Sunset Terrace opening ad, the 1955 Morrison's announcement, dated menus, the ownership transfer record and a final closing notice. Any one of them would fill a real gap in the story, and old family scrapbooks, attic boxes and estate-sale finds are exactly where treasures like that tend to resurface.
Pull Up a Chair One More Time
Greater Orlando has gained hundreds of restaurants since 1986, and many of them are excellent. Few, though, can claim a 33-year run, a family that treated Sunday dinner like a house party, and a guest list stretching from Eleanor Roosevelt to Billy Graham.
The richest record of Imperial House may not live in any archive at all. It's tucked into family photo albums, kitchen-drawer matchbooks and the memories of locals who marked life's big moments at those linen-covered tables. If your parents got engaged over that prime rib, or you can still taste those cinnamon rolls, write the story down and tell it to someone younger. Dick Higley would have pulled up a chair to hear it.
🔥 Love Orlando history like this? Well, there's plenty more where this came from, right here.
Sources:
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/1986/05/09/with-imperial-house-gone-memories-reign-supreme/
https://abhof.culverhouse.ua.edu/member/arthur-r-outlaw/
https://www.cardcow.com/645469/imperial-house-winter-park-florida/
https://whatnow.com/orlando/restaurants/the-imperial-winter-park-relocating-to-south-park-avenue/
https://www.cardcow.com/645468/imperial-house-restaurant-winter-park-florida/
https://www.tighehamilton.com/obituaries/doris-rosen
https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/article/1960/5/1/club-calendar
https://d3so5znv45ku4h.cloudfront.net/Box+046/022_Visit-Winter+Park,+Florida+1971.pdf
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2018/05/20/deaths-in-central-florida-520/
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/orlandosentinel/name/boots-pepper-obituary?id=11904618
https://www.ebay.com/itm/317039051698
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275629209974
http://www.thehistorycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/OCRHC_Genealogy_Resources_0.pdf
