Sarasota is a city in Sarasota County on the southwestern coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is at the southern end of the Tampa Bay Area, 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. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019 Sarasota had a population of 58,285. In 1986 it became designated as a certified local government. Sarasota is a principal city of the Sarasota metropolitan area, and is the seat of Sarasota County. Long the winter headquarters of the Ringling Brothers Circus, many landmarks in Sarasota are named for the Ringlings.
Warm Mineral Springs is a census-designated place (CDP) in Sarasota County, Florida, United States. The population was 5,061 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Bradenton–Sarasota–Venice Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Riverview High School is a four-year public high school in Sarasota, Florida, United States. Riverview educates students from ninth grade to twelfth grade. The school has 2,654 students and 129 teachers. The school's mascot is the ram. As of the 2012–2013 school year, it is the largest school in the county.
The Warm Mineral Springs is a water-filled sinkhole located in North Port, Florida, a mile north of U.S. 41. The primary water supply is a spring vent deep beneath the pool's water surface. Warm Mineral Springs is the only warm water mineral spring in the State of Florida. It is an important geological and archaeological site containing Native American remnants. It functioned as a small natural spa since the 1960s. People travel from all over the world to soak in the mineral-rich waters. It has been reputed to be the fountain of youth sought by Ponce de Leon with healing powers. It was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on November 28, 1977. The springs re-opened for swimming only in 2014.
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. On March 22, 1984, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
The El Vernona Apartments-Broadway 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.
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 Lewis House, also known as Lewis Spring House, is a historic home in Tallahassee, Florida, located north of I-10, at 3117 Okeeheepkee Road. It was built in 1954. On February 14, 1979, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for George Lewis II, President of the Lewis State Bank, and his wife Clifton. George Lewis gave the name "Spring House" to the home "for the natural spring and small stream that flows from the property." The National Trust for Historic Preservation describes its significance: "The novel hemicycle form of Spring House represents a late, and little-known, stage in Wright’s long, prolific career. Although there are approximately 400 intact houses attributed to Wright throughout the country, only a fraction were from his hemicycle series."
Casa Del Mar is a historic house located at 25 South Washington Drive in Sarasota, Florida.
The Sarasota School of Architecture, sometimes called Sarasota Modern, is a regional style of post-war modern architecture (1941–1966) that emerged on Florida's Central West Coast, in and around the city of Sarasota, Florida. It is characterized by open-plan structures, often with large planes of glass to facilitate natural illumination and ventilation, that address the unique indigenous requirements of the regional climate. Many of the architects who pioneered this style became world-renowned later in their careers, and several significant buildings remain in Sarasota today.
The West Baden Springs Hotel, formerly known as the West Baden Inn, is part of the French Lick Resort Casino and is a national historic landmark hotel in West Baden Springs, Orange County, Indiana. It is known for the 200-foot (61 m) dome covering its atrium. Prior to the completion of the Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1955, the hotel had the largest free-spanning dome in the United States. From 1902 to 1913 it was the largest dome in the world. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, the hotel became a National Historic Landmark in 1987. It is a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and one of the hotels in the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Historic Hotels of America program.
The Revere Quality House is a house located in Siesta Key, Florida that was designed by architects Paul Rudolph and Ralph Twitchell. It is a breakthrough in twentieth-century residential architecture which blends elements of the International Style with site-sensitive design that is considered one of the notable examples of the Sarasota School of Architecture. The house represents a substantial advancement in how people should live within their environment, and established a new paradigm in tropical home construction.
The Caribbean Motel is a historic motel located in Wildwood Crest, Cape May County, New Jersey, United States, in an area now known as the Wildwoods Shore Resort Historic District. The motel was built in 1957 in the Doo-Wop style by Lou Morey, whose family built many of the Wildwoods' original Doo Wop motels, for original owners Dominic and Julie Rossi. It was owned by the Rossi family until the early 1990s, when they sold it to multi-billionaire Mister Bolero, and was the first motel to use the full-size plastic palm trees that now adorn most of the Doo Wop motels in the area.
M. Leo Elliott was an architect known for his work in Tampa, Temple Terrace and Sarasota, Florida. His designs include the public buildings and first eight houses in the City of Temple Terrace, Florida (1921), Ybor City's Centro Asturiano de Tampa, Old Tampa City Hall, Osprey School, two buildings that were part of Florida College and the original Temple Terrace Estates, Masonic Temple No. 25 (1928), the 1920 addition to Sarasota High School and Historic Spanish Point. Several of the properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Cactus Motor Lodge, later known as the Cactus RV Park, was a motel located along historic U.S. Route 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico. I.E. and Edna Perry built the lodge in 1941. The motel included three wings of units forming a "U" shape and an office, the latter of which was a dance hall when the motel opened. In 1952, Norm Wegner purchased the motel; Wegner added an artificial stone exterior to the buildings and converted the dance hall to an office. After Route 66 was decommissioned, the motel lost much of its business, and by the 1990s it became an RV park; the motel units fell into disuse. The motel's neon sign was restored in 2008. In October 2018, the sign was sold and removed to be relocated to an Albuquerque neon-sign park. Many other items were sold off before the owners sold the property itself to O'Reilly Auto Parts. O'Reilly razed all structures before beginning construction on their store at the location.
Jack West (1922–2010) was an architect in Sarasota, Florida and briefly in Southern California. West was one of the leaders of the Sarasota School of Architecture.
Victor Alfred Lundy is an American architect. An exemplar of modernist architecture, he was one of the leaders of the Sarasota School of Architecture. His Warm Mineral Springs Motel, outside Warm Mineral Springs, Florida, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. He was honored by the Smithsonian on his 90th birthday in 2013. A film on his life and work, entitled "Victor Lundy: Sculptor of Space" was premiered by the GSA on February 25, 2014.
William J. Rupp was one of the modernist American architects considered part the Sarasota School of Architecture.
The Scott Commercial Building is a historic building located in Sarasota, Florida at 261 South Orange Avenue.
Seagate, also known as the Bay Club, is located along Sarasota Bay in Manatee County, Florida, and was the former winter estate of Powel Crosley Jr., a noted Cincinnati, Ohio, industrialist and entrepreneur. Crosley had the 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2), Mediterranean Revival-style home built in 1929 for his wife, Gwendolyn, on 45-acre (18-hectare) of land along Sarasota Bay that was platted in 1925 for a failed subdivision. New York architect George Albree Freeman Jr. designed the home; Ivo A. de Minicis, a Tampa, Florida, architect, drafted the plans; and Paul W. Bergmann, a Sarasota contractor, reportedly built the 2+1⁄2-story, cast-stone-and-stucco home in 135 days. Gwendolyn Crosley died at Seagate in 1939. After allowing the Army Air Corps to use the home for airmen who were training at a nearby airbase during World War II, Crosley sold the property in 1947. Freeman Horton and his wife, Mabel, bought it the following year. The Horton family lived on the estate from 1948 to 1977. The Campeau Corporation of America acquired the property in the early 1980s, intending to develop it into condominium units and use the residence serving as the development's clubhouse, but its plans failed. The Crosley home and 45 acres of adjacent property were formally added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 1983.
