1959 was a watershed for Sarasota. Just as the completion of the Mira Mar on Palm Avenue in the early '20s had signaled our emergence as a fashionable resort, the announcement the plan to develop Bird Key and John Ringling's other Sarasota properties (bought for a reported $13.5 million) indicated that Sarasota's days of being a small, quiet town were numbered.

In the '20s, Andrew McAnsh, the developer of the Mira Mar, had been welcomed to town by a brass band and a wildly enthusiastic crowd who knew how important his world class hotel was to Sarasota's future. Pictured frequently in the press in a vested suit and straw hat, he was labeled a "town builder" and, pronounced, "I am sanguine that Sarasota has a great destiny."

The first phase in the grandiose development program was to be Bird Key, and its promotion surpassed anything ever seen in Sarasota. Full page ads, slick brochures, television and radio spots, articles in Life, Time, Sports Illustrated and other national publications touted Sarasota throughout the country.

The object of all this promotion had originally been the spectacular domain of Thomas Worcester. He added to the 14 acre isle in 1912 by dredging pp 30,000 cubic yards of sand, planting trees and tropical foliage and building New Edzell castle, a $100,000 showplace named after the ancestral Scottish estate of his wife. In a letter to Worcester, she wrote of Bird Key: "This is what I want for my old age ... Oh! Words cannot paint the scene imagination cannot conceive of such grandeur." It was to be their retirement paradise, but Mrs. Worcester died before its completion.

In the early 1920s, John Ringling purchased the property from Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Pickett and linked it to the mainland with the Ringling Causeway. When Ringling died in 1936, he bequeathed it to his only sister, Ida Ringling North, who lived there until she died in 1950.

Bird Key Development Corp., whose president was Ida's son, circus head John Ringling North, bought the property in 1951 with the intention of expanding it to almost 300 acres. Their plan for luxury home sites would offer less than a decade later, but the Ringling consortium received a less that enthusiastic reception. During a particularly acrimonious public hearing, State Rep. James Haley asked the Ringling group's attorney, "Why don't you go back to New York and run your own business?" A.B. Edwards, one of Sarasota's most revered citizens, feared that the development would hurt the bay. He warned, "When you interfere with the channels, bars, currents and waterways, you're liable to have trouble." After several modifications and a number of hearings, votes and court actions, the Ringling proposal was shelved.

The approved plat included 511 home sites 291 were on the water with the then futuristic concept of underground utilities, a $250,000 yacht club of Colonial Bahamian design and the most attractive feature of all, "the sheer beauty of Bird Key's tropical vista."

On Oct. 15, 1960, after one year's work, the project was completed. Lots were priced from, $9,000 to $32,000 and sold quickly.

@ 1990 by Jeff LaHurd

Quintessential Sarasota, Stories & Pictures from the 1920s - 1950s Clubhouse Publishing Inc., Sarasota, Florida