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LOCATION: College Park, Florida
DATE: 2020
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
Located in the College Park district of the City of Orlando, The Jack Kerouac House is a small residential structure where the noted Beat author lived while completing The Dharma Bums. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, the site is currently owned by The Kerouac Project of Orlando, a non-profit organization enabling writers to live at the residence for three-month periods. The digital documentation of the site was selected by UCF undergraduate history student Courtney Verna-Brown as a semester research project during Spring 2020. Courtney conducted a laser scan project of the interior and exterior of the residence with our Leica RTC360 and the Field 360 iPad software and subsequently registered the scans with Cyclone Register 360. Her goal was to develop a complete history of the building and the significance of Kerouac and his writings. Courtney was accepted to participate in UCF’s Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence (SURE Awards), however, university closure due to COVID-19 prevented the showcase from occurring.
An excerpt from Courtney’s research paper:
1418 Clouser Avenue was built in 1925 during the economic boom of the 1920s by Daniel Clouser. Situated on the cross streets of Clouser Avenue and Shady Lane Drive, the home on the outside is quite unremarkable to anyone who passes by it on their morning run or daily commute. A small, two-bedroom, two-bath home surrounded by trees and well-maintained brush, the only indication that this mismatched blue paneled home with a brick chimney is the sign out front beside the porch indicating its historical significance. The widely accepted story is that the house was a post-World War I build-your-own home from Sears and was erected on a plot of land that was once a citrus grove. Kerouac had written in letters that his mother loved being surrounded by all of the citrus groves Orlando had to offer. While the entire property is about 1,336 square feet, Kerouac and his mother rented an addition in the back of the home, composed of one bedroom, one bathroom, a side door, and a backdoor leading to Shady Lane Drive and a general living area.
About Courtney
Courtney was an undergraduate student studying History with an Anthropological Archaeology minor and is now a graduate History student at UCF. Her interests in the field include the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 1960s and the treatment of marginalized groups in America during the Second World War. Her Spring 2020 research project included a study of Jack Kerouac’s life in Florida and a detailed scan of his home in the Orlando neighborhood of College Park. Courtney hopes to participate further in her study of Jack Kerouac’s life in Central Florida.
ChronoPoints would like to thank the Kerouac Project for permission to scan the building and UCF Creative Writing Professor Terry Thaxton for assisting Courtney.