In 1916 the city of Sarasota was rebuffed by the neighborhood of Bungalow Hill. They rejected taxation without representation by incorporating into the community of Sarasota Heights.
This past weekend was the Second Annual Chalk Festival (Avenida des Colores) in historic Herald Square. That area used to be known as 'Little Five Points'.
Host Lee Gaines takes you on a journey of how this remarkable man managed to develop land, build the Ringling Causeway, Ca'd'Zan, Burns Court, the Herald Square Building, the El Vernona Hotel (later known as John Ringling Towers), Burns Realty (later the home of Karl Bickel), downtown seawalls, and substantial homes prior to the Great Depression.
Who is Ringling Boulevard named after in Sarasota? If you thought John Ringling of Circus and Museum fame you'd be wrong. It was his brother Charles Ringling. He played a key role in the development of the downtown area.
The history of the Crocker Memorial Church begins with Peter Crocker, a Civil War veteran born in Wheeler, New York, who became a lighthouse keeper in Key West, Florida, and who, with his wife Sophia, came to the Sara Sota area of Manatee County in 1873 where he purchased 20 acres southwest of Bay and Bee Ridge Roads.
Today, many people look at the Marina Jack restaurant and boat docks and think they have always been here. Not so...They are just beyond where the Scots landed and built our first pier.