Bertha Palmer’s grand home among mansions with names | Sarasota History with Jeff LaHurd

Several named mansions owe their construction to the influence of Bertha Palmer, the Queen of Chicago Society who arrived in Sarasota in 1910 starting the valuable Chicago connection to Sarasota.

Following her pronouncements about the area’s beauty, comparing Sarasota Bay favorably to the Bay of Naples, many Windy City residents followed her lead.

Initially Palmer had planned to build a lavish mansion and brought prolific architect Thomas Reed Martin for that purpose. But according to Palmer biographer Hope Black, instead she decided to reconstruct what became known as The Oaks and enhance the lavish gardens. Black said Palmer bought the property from Lawrence Jones of the whiskey family. (Four Roses bourbon.)

Her sons, Potter and Honore, purchased acreage north of The Oaks and constructed a mansion dubbed Immokalee, said to be Seminole for “my home.” Both brothers along with their families wintered there.

At the time of its construction in 1912, it was said to be the largest home on the bay. Described by The Sarasota Times as, “a very handsome residence, a frame building to be furnished in northern style both inside and out ... . The rooms are large and airy, and piazzas will be on several sides.”

Tragically, the historic home burned to the ground in 1921 and rather than rebuild, Honore decided to enhance the caretaker’s house and continued to winter there.

His brother, Potter, had previously moved into The Oaks after Bertha died in 1918.

Wealaka, the Native American name for Laughing Waters, was selected by Stanley Fields as the name of one of the most lavish mansions in all of Sarasota. The home of Chicagoans Stanley and Sara Marshall; he the noted financier and president of Marshall Fields.

The sub-headline on the January 13, 1927, edition of the Sarasota Herald announced, “Stanley Fields Is To Erect $385,000 Mansion Here.” The article went on to describe the home as “Palatial.” As an aside, as Sarasota was experiencing the pangs of the real estate crash, the paper noted the hopeful notation that the construction, “comes as welcome news ... indicating the continued building activity and justification of all the optimism possible in this region. (The cost of the mansion would be $5,365,000 in today’s money.)

Architect for the fantastical new home was the renowned David Adler whose Chicago Mansions were among the greatest in the city. He was said to be “A perfectionist whose work the most elegant of his time. He became the architect of choice “to whom Chicago’s rich entrusted their most extravagant fantasies.”

Constructed by the Stevenson and Cameron company who built the Sarasota County Court House, it was assured that “nowhere will the new home be surpassed in architectural beauty and novelty of design.”

The Fields hosted many grand soirees with women in Parisian gowns, and men in black-tie and tails arriving by boats in the lagoon and walking up the winding steps and into the home.

In 1957, during Sarasota’s post-war boom, Field was certain that his lovely home and artfully designed landscaped property would fall to a developer. To forgo that eventuality, Field sold the property for an incomprehensibly low $175,992 with the proviso that it be maintained as a club – today, the renowned The Field Club.

Arguably Sarasota’s most famous named home, is John and Mable Ringling’s Ca’ d’Zan, the “House of John,” a Venetian palazzo which has graced Sarasota Bay since 1926, and today, is a major tourist attraction.

Designed by Dwight James Baum, who was given the commission after Ringling and Thomas Reed Martin could not come to terms, the home fulfilled Ringling’s desire for a “pretentious” edifice, one that reflected his high social standing. It was prophesied by the Sarasota Herald that it would become “one of the showplaces of the country.”

(John and Mable’s first home in Sarasota was called Palms Elysian. Located on the same property, the former the home of circus man Charles Thompson was bought by Ralph Caples, improved and sold to the Ringlings).

One of the first named homes in Sarasota was New Edzell Castle, aka the Worcester Mansion on Bird Key. This was the dream retirement home of Davie Lindsay Worcester, a woman of great charity who had discovered the small isle while in Sarasota for her health.

She took her launch Dido there with friends one day and wrote of the area to her husband, Thomas in Cincinnati, “The shore was laden with shells ... so beautiful I could not pick them, dear, at first. I felt that my heart would burst on that shell-bestrewn shore with thousands of palms soaring toward the clouds; at our feet the Gulf of Mexico washing up restless, to our toe tips, and scattered, scattered everywhere ... all beautiful toys, as it were. ... This is what I want for my old age ... Oh! Words cannot paint the scene; imagination cannot conceive of such grandeur.”

After purchasing the small island from the state, Thomas set about building New Edzell Castle, named after her ancestral Scottish Estate. The Sarasota Sun called it The Isle of Enchantment.

Much of the design work of the Georgian-style home was done by Davie, who had never fully regained her health, and on Oct. 14, 1912, died before her dream home was completed.

Thomas Worcester lived in the home until he died in 1918, and John Ringling purchased the property in 1922. His plans called for the New Edzell Castle to become the Winter White House for President Warren G. Harding. Consequently, the roads on St. Armands and Lido Key were named for former American presidents. Unfortunately, Harding died before the plan could be carried out.

Arthur Vining Davis, chairman of Alcoa, and his Arvida Corp. set development sites on Sarasota and bought out the Ringling holdings including Bird Key, for which there were grand plans. The island was to be enlarged to 300 acres, enough to accommodate 511 home sites.

Powel Crosley, known in his hometown as Cincinnati’s Thomas Edison, was one of America's leading industrialists. He and his wife, Gwendolyn bought a 63-acre parcel of bayfront land just north of the Sarasota/Manatee County line for a reported $35,000 and built one of the loveliest mansions in the area.

Seagate, their winter retreat, was designed by well-known architect George Albee Freeman of New York and Sarasota and constructed by Paul Bergman for a reported $350,000.

The 11,000-square-foot, Mediterranean Revival home was completed in 135 days and boasted 10 bedrooms and 10 baths, a yacht basin, servant’s quarters, and a terrazzo pool fed from an artisan well.

After Gwendolyn died at Seagate in 1939, Powel seldom returned, allowing it to be used by the Army Air Corps, which was training at the Sarasota Army Air Base. Powel sold the estate in 1948.

Next week: The Chicago connection continues with a home fit for a royalty.

Jeff LaHurd was raised in Sarasota and is an award-winning historian.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota History: Ca’ d’Zan just one of many stately homes with names