Jim Stoll created many of the detailed paintings used to illustrate the downtown of the past for Orlando Remembered’s displays.
Jim’s daughter, Claire, provided the following biographical information: “Jim was an only child who grew up in New York and got his undergraduate degree from Syracuse University. He served in the Navy in WWII as a lookout on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. After the war he earned a Master’s degree in art from Columbia in NYC. He met my mother, Joan Kelly at work, and they married and moved to Florida after I was born. They had six children and lived in Orlando until they divorced when I was in my 20s. He worked as a commercial artist from home after working at Martin Marietta. Jim then married Jackie, a French woman, and they lived in Winter Park in my grandparents’ house after they had died.
He had time to make art for his own pleasure and was very interested in Orlando history. Some of his art work, including models he built of a steamboat are in the museum in, I believe in Sanford (on display at the Seminole County Historical Museum.)
He had aquariums at our home and caught his own fish around Sebastian Inlet to put in it. He enjoyed scuba diving. He was a Catholic and raised us as Catholics. He was a creative man with a good sense of humor.” Jim passed away in 2004.
Read Jim’s obit here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/orlandosentinel/name/james-stoll-obituary?id=27201139
See Jim’s work in the collection of the Historical Society of Central Florida here.
Jim also created the illustrations used on the covers of both volumes of Eve Bacon’s Orlando A Centennial History.