Sarasota History
The presence of people, possibly Paleo-Indian, along the west coast of Florida dates back to around 8,000 B.C. and there is evidence that native Americans lived along the waterfront of Sarasota and southwest Florida more than 3,000 years ago.
In the 1500's, the first Spanish explorers, Ponce de Leon, Panfilo Narvaez, and Hernando De Soto landed on the Gulf Coast in search of gold and silver. In 1821, the United States acquired the territory of Florida and in 1824, the Armed Occupation Act allowed for private ownership of land along Sarasota Bay, but only for incoming settlers. The native Seminoles were not allowed to become citizens or own land and were pushed even further south.
In 1855, the settlers won their war with the Seminoles but it wasn't until the 1880's that development really began. Some of the few remaining remnants of 19th century Sarasota history are found downtown. The Bidwell-Wood House at 849 Florida a was built in 1884 and is notorious as the site where the plot to assassinate Sarasota's first postmaster, Charles Albee, was hatched. This violent episode ended years of contention between local farmers and groups of land speculators who, after the Civil War, tried to circumvent the 1862 Homestead Act by terrorizing early settlers. With no organized system to dispense justice, frontier law ruled.
In 1885, Sarasota was promoted in Scotland. Many families sailed to America expecting fields of vegetables, housing, and citrus groves. They found only a stump-filled Main Street
and most of the colonists left. John Hamilton Gillespie arrived from Edinburgh, Scotland in 1886 to help manage the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company's colony which had arrived the previous December. Gillespie, a Scottish aristocrat, lawyer and member of the Royal Company of Archers, Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland, built what is believed to be America's first golf course in Sarasota. Gillespie also built the DeSoto Hotel on Main Street for tourists and prospective investors. In 1902, he was elected as Sarasota's first mayor.
Scottish influence remains through the annual Sarasota Highland Games and Festival and the Riverview High Kiltie band, which wears authentic kilts and features bagpipers and Highland dancers.
The Crowley Museum and Nature Center in eastern Sarasota vividly demonstrates what life was like for Sarasota's first settlers in the late 19th century. Sarasota began attracting wealthy Americans in the 1910's as it does today. Bertha Palmer, widow of Chicago developer Potter Palmer, came to Sarasota and built extensive gardens on her waterfront winter estate, Osprey Point, which is today's Historic Spanish Point. Palmer also purchased a 30,000-acre ranch in eastern Sarasota which is now Myakka River State Park. Palmer was the catalyst that would help change the little town from a sleepy fishing village to a cosmopolitan city. Her declaration that Sarasota Bay was more beautiful than the Bay of Naples caught the attention of the press and visionaries who led the residents away from their frontier past.
Named for its bee swarms, Isaac Alderman Redd first settled the area following Florida's Seminole Wars. The town was platted by one of Mrs. Potter Palmer's companies. Her Bee Ridge Hotel opened in 1914 and the new town boasted a railway station, an apartment house, barbershop and store. The most striking examples of Sarasota's past are landmark homes and commercial buildings which were built during the real estate boom of the '20s. Growth, which normally would have taken decades, was compressed into a few short years in a frenzy of development. Between 1923 and 1926, the town sprouted high rise hotels, theaters, banks, palatial private residences and housing.
In these boom years, builders capitalized on our Spanish heritage and many examples of this style of architecture can be found throughout the county.
John and Charles Ringling-of Circus Fame
John and Charles Ringling, of the famous Ringling Brothers Circus and Barnum & Bailey Circus were major early builders/developers promoting the merits of Sarasota all over the world. John Ringling made a mark on the community of Sarasota in various ways. In the 1920s, he and his wife, Mable, built a magnificent Venetian-style estate on Sarasota Bay named Cà d' Zan. Then they built an art museum for their collection of works by Peter Paul Rubens and other 17th-century Italian and Flemish art. The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art combines a world class art collection, circus memorabilia and gardens filled with majestic statues of antiquity. The palatial Ca'd'Zan, located on the grounds of the museum, was their home. As a collector of Italian baroque and renaissance art (including huge paintings by Paul Rubens) John Ringling built the museum which he left to the State of Florida.
Lido Key, John Ringling's dream location for a resort community, was once a series of unconnected islands. John used his circus elephants to help build the first bridge from the mainland to St. Armands Key. Just before the crash of 1929, Ringling filled the areas between the islands and built a causeway reaching from the mainland thus opening up the newly formed Lido Area. St. Armands Circle was designed by John Ringling as part of the Ringling Estates subdivision. He dotted it with his numerous Italian baroque statues. It is now a shopper's mecca. Ringling built the original wooden causeway to provide automobile access to his development. The modern causeway is named after him.
Designed by Charles Ringling, the Courthouse Subdivision was platted on land which had been part of John Hamilton Gillespie's nine-hole golf course. It extended from Links Avenue to School Avenue and from Main Street to Golf Street and Adams Lane.
Ringling provided some of the land for the Dwight James Baum designed courthouse which opened in 1927. His Charles Ringling Hotel, later the Sarasota Terrace Hotel, now the county administration building at 101 South Washington Boulevard, opened in 1926.
The circus' winter quarters were moved to Sarasota in 1927, thus creating a new identity for Sarasota as a "circus town." Now Sarasota is known as the "Circus Capitol of the World" and is home to many circuses. In 1949, the gymnastics program at Sarasota High School was expanded to include circus acts and the Sarasota Sailor Circus was born. Sarasota County is the only public school system in the United States that sponsors an after school youth circus program known as the Sailor Circus and is also home to Ringling's Clown College.
No clowning around, we take the circus very seriously. The notion of Sarasota as "The Athens of the Gulf Coast" was put in place by John and Charles Ringling who moved the winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Sarasota in 1927. The Ringling’s were convinced that this area was prime for growth. At one time they owned tens of thousand of acres here and planned to build a casino to attract tourists. The crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression put an end to their dreams of development. However, their influence continues to play a significant role in the area.
No question about it, without the Ringlings things would be much different around here. However, the Ringling legacy is only one part of our circus heritage. Currently there are 15 circus companies with headquarters in Sarasota County. You'll find more circus people living here, both active and retired, than in any one place in the world. Part of the 1952 circus film "The Greatest Show on Earth" was filmed in Sarasota, which, of course, must explain why it won an Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year.
