El Vernona Apartments-Broadway Apartments | |
Location | Sarasota, Florida |
---|---|
Coordinates | 27°20′23″N82°32′54″W / 27.33972°N 82.54833°W |
Architect | Dwight James Baum |
MPS | Sarasota MRA |
NRHP reference No. | 84003836 [1] |
Added to NRHP | March 22, 1984 |
The El Vernona Apartments-Broadway Apartments (also known as the Belle Haven Apartments) is a historic site in Sarasota, Florida. It is located at 1133 Fourth Street. On March 22, 1984, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
This three-story, "L"-shaped plan, stucco and cast stone Mediterranean Revival building was designed by Dwight James Baum as the Broadway or El Vernona Apartments, named for Vernona Hill Freeman Burns, the wife of Owen Burns, the developer, later being known as the El Vernona Apartments-Broadway Apartments. [2] Today, the building is commonly known as the Belle Haven. The reinforced concrete and hollow-tile construction complex was built by Ricketts and Haworth, owned by the Burns Realty Company and opened for occupancy in March 1926. The construction permit was issued for the complex by the end of October 1925 and construction materials were received by the contracting firm by December of the same year. By March 1926, the fifty-five-room complex of twenty furnished apartments was ready for occupancy and the total cost of the complex was $250,000.
The site of the apartment complex overlooking Sarasota Bay, marked the northern gateway of the Broadway Development that included the El Vernona Hotel (later known as John Ringling Towers), the Burns Realty complex, and the new headquarters of the Sarasota Times newspaper. The Broadway development was spearheaded by Owen Burns, who commissioned the architect Dwight James Baum to design the hotel, offices, and apartment for his development. The area was well-planned and unified by the selection of the Mediterranean Revival Style for all new buildings. In addition to the Broadway buildings, the architect Dwight James Baum designed the Ca' d'Zan residence for John Ringling that also was built by Burns, as well as the Sarasota County Courthouse that was donated to the county by Edith and Charles Ringling.
The Broadway or El Vernona Apartments are significant for architectural design and associations with the nationally renowned architect Dwight James Baum and the locally significant developer, Owen Burns. The Broadway Apartment is the most architecturally-intact Baum-designed building in Sarasota.
The architect of record, Dwight James Baum, a prominent New York architect who was graduated from the University of Syracuse with a degree in architecture in 1909, also designed Ca' d'Zan for John Ringling, the Sarasota County Courthouse, and various residential buildings for other Owen Burns development sites. Following the collapse of the real estate market in Sarasota, Baum worked as a consultant for the "Good Housekeeping" magazine.
The El Vernona Apartments (Belle Haven Apartments) were locally designated by the city of Sarasota in 1984.
Temple Terrace is an incorporated city in northeastern Hillsborough County, Florida, United States, adjacent to Tampa. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 26,690. It is the third and smallest incorporated municipality in Hillsborough County. Incorporated in 1925, the community is known for its rolling landscape, bucolic Hillsborough River views, and majestic trees; it has the grandest sand live oak trees of any place in central Florida and is a Tree City USA. Temple Terrace was originally planned in the 1920s Mediterranean-Revival golf course community and is one of the first such communities in the United States.
Sarasota is a city in and the county seat of Sarasota County, Florida, United States. It is located in Southwest Florida, the southern end of the Greater Tampa Bay Area, and north of Fort Myers and Punta Gorda. Its official limits include Sarasota Bay and several barrier islands between the bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Sarasota is a principal city of the Sarasota metropolitan area. According to the 2020 U.S. census, Sarasota had a population of 54,842.
Mediterranean Revival is an architectural style introduced in the United States, Canada, and certain other countries in the 19th century. It incorporated references from Spanish Renaissance, Spanish Colonial, Italian Renaissance, French Colonial, Beaux-Arts, Moorish architecture, and Venetian Gothic architecture.
John Nicholas Ringling was an American entrepreneur who is the best known of the seven Ringling brothers, five of whom merged the Barnum & Bailey Circus with their own Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows to create a virtual monopoly of traveling circuses and helped shape the modern circus. In addition to owning and managing many of the largest circuses in the United States, he was also a rancher, a real estate developer and art collector. He was inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 1987.
Burns Square Historic District is a historic district located in Sarasota, Florida, United States. The area runs from Ringling Boulevard to Mound Avenue along South Pineapple and South Orange Avenues. Burns Square is bound by Laurel Park Historic District to the east, Palm Avenue residential neighborhood to the west, and Hudson Bayou to the south.
Historic district
The Sarasota County Courthouse is a historic courthouse building located in Sarasota, Florida. Designed by architect Dwight James Baum in the Mediterranean Revival style, it was built in 1926-1927 by Stevenson and Cameron, Inc. of New York.
The Sarasota Municipal Auditorium, listed in the National Register as Municipal Auditorium-Recreation Club, is a historic multi-purpose facility built-in 1938. It is located at 801 Tamiami Trail North and is owned/operated by the municipal government of Sarasota, Florida. The auditorium has 10,000 square feet (930 m2) of exhibit space on its main floor and also contains an Art Deco style stage measuring 1,500 square feet (140 m2).
The Sarasota Times Building is a historic site in Sarasota, Florida. It is located at 1214–1216 1st Street. On March 22, 1984, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The three-story asymmetrically-massed, stucco and cast stone façade, Mediterranean Revival structure was designed by architect Dwight James Baum. It is significant to Sarasota's heritage for its role as a newspaper established in 1899, and also for its architectural merits.
The El Vernona Hotel–John Ringling Hotel was a famous hotel located at 111 North Tamiami Trail in Sarasota, Florida, United States.
Cà d'Zan is a Mediterranean revival residence in Sarasota, Florida, adjacent to Sarasota Bay. Cà d'Zan was built in the mid-1920s as the winter retreat of the American circus mogul, entrepreneur, and art collector John Ringling and his wife Mable Burton Ringling. The name Cà d'Zan means "House of John" in the Venetian language, in Italian it would be "Casa di Giovanni".
The Random House Tower, also known as the Park Imperial Apartments, is a 52-story mixed-use tower in Manhattan, New York City. It is owned by real estate companies SL Green Realty and Ivanhoé Cambridge, with the office portion leased as the headquarters to book publisher Random House from the beginning and its parent company Penguin Random House since 2016, giving the building its name; a luxury apartment complex follows above the offices. The PRH entrance is on Broadway and goes up to 27 floors, while the apartment complex entrance is on West 56th Street. Rising to 684 ft, it is the 77th tallest building in New York City.
Owen Burns was born in Fredericktown in Cecil County on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He was an entrepreneur, banker, builder, and land developer who at one time owned the majority of the land comprising Sarasota, Florida and developed or built many of its historic structures, developments, roads, seawalls, and bridges. He became a leader in the community, contributing to its growth and development.
Dwight James Baum was an American architect most active in New York and in Sarasota, Florida. His work includes Cà d'Zan, the Sarasota Times Building (1925), Sarasota County Courthouse (1926), early residences in Temple Terrace, Florida, Sarasota County Courthouse (1927), Pinecroft, West Side YMCA on 63rd Street between Central Park and Columbus Avenue, Columbus Circle (1934) and Hendricks Memorial Chapel.
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is the official state art museum of Florida, located in Sarasota, Florida. It was established in 1927 as the legacy of Mable Burton Ringling and John Ringling for the people of Florida. Florida State University assumed governance of the museum in 2000.
Thomas Reed Martin was an architect who was brought to Florida by one of its major developers during the turn of the twentieth century. He designed some 500 residences and various public and private buildings in Sarasota, as well as commercial buildings. His Florida buildings are located from Tampa to Fort Myers with many in Nokomis.
Ralph Spencer Twitchell was one of the founding members of the Sarasota School of Architecture. He is considered the father of the group of modernist architecture practitioners, that includes Paul Rudolph and Jack West, and other modernist architects who were active in the Sarasota area in the 1950s and 1960s like Ralph and William Zimmerman, Gene Leedy, Mark Hampton, Edward “Tim” Seibert, Victor Lundy, William Rupp, Bert Brosmith, Frank Folsom Smith, James Holiday, Joseph Farrell and Carl Abbott. He bridged the more traditional architecture of his early work in Florida during the 1920s with his modernist designs that began in the 1940s.
William J. Rupp was one of the modernist American architects considered part the Sarasota School of Architecture.
The earliest known identification of the area known today as Sarasota, Florida, was identified on a sheepskin Spanish map from 1763 with the word "Zarazote" written over the location of present-day Sarasota and Bradenton. The municipal government of Sarasota was established when it was incorporated as a town in 1902. Incorporation under the city form of government followed in the next decade. In 1921, Sarasota County was formed out of Manatee County, with Sarasota city serving as the county seat.