Saturday morning, join our historic peers, the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation, on their hour-long walking tour of the Granada neighborhood. Admission is $25.
To mark the centennial year of Sarasota County, the Historical Society produced several educational events. These have had to be translated from in-person appearances to online presentations for use during the pandemic. The filmed reading of the play, The Roads We Traveled to Sarasota County, written and produced by Board member Kathryn Chesley, is available on loan for group showings with an appropriate honorarium. Please contact our office for more information. We will also be presenting the video with in-person commentary by Ms. Chesley and actors, as our November Conversation at the Crocker.
The slide show, From Wilderness to County, was originally created for our Speakers’ Bureau to take on the road to clubs, groups, and other gatherings. Kate Holmes, a volunteer with HSoSC, wrote, created, and presented this event while costumed as and in the persona of Lizzie Webb Guptill, a real-life pioneer who arrived in this area as a 12-year-old in 1867. Lizzie’s viewpoint of Sarasota’s journey from an unpopulated wilderness to a 20th-century county, can be viewed here.
It’s a journey to 1921, and we hope you enjoy it.
“Timing is everything,” is the mantra of many legendary comedians and actors who agree that when you drop that punch line or make that gesture can be the difference between a successful performance and one that is not. Lately, all of us have been reconsidering our timing. When to return to restaurants, when to have a dinner party, when to wear a mask, when to take a seat in the audience of a live theater production, when to see book club or bridge friends again.
“Because of the recent surge in COVID cases we have had to reevaluate our timing at HSOSC.
“It is the consensus of our Boards that our timing is off for the start of public programming at the Crocker Memorial Church. Consequently, we are postponing the October Conversation at The Crocker. Our season will (hopefully) begin with the November Conversation on Tuesday, November 9, and we will also hope to see you all before the Conversation at our Welcome Back Reception the same evening. Stay tuned to our blog here, our Facebook page, and our website for details.
“Hopefully time will be on our side in November.”
— Marsha Fottler, President, & the Board of Directors & the Advisory Board
Our presenter on Tuesday evening, January 14 2020 (Please Note: the incorrect date went out to some of our subscribers. The correct date for this presentation is Tuesday January 14. Our apologies.) at 7pm is J.B. Miller. He is a lifelong Mennonite who lives in Sarasota and teaches about Mennonites and Amish.
“Many people have limited knowledge of Mennonites and Amish,” said Miller. “Often their only contact is them pedaling around on three-wheelers or visiting one of the restaurants located in Pinecraft, an enclave home to primarily Amish and conservative Mennonites.”
This Conversation at the Crocker is all about the Mennonites – who they are, why they came to Sarasota, why they dress the way they do, and what their influence has been on the shaping of our community. We are lucky to have a speaker who can answer all your questions.
Doors open at 6pm – program begins at 7pm. Free to HSoSC Members – $10 for future members.
CONVERSATIONS AT THE CROCKER: Our most popular gatherings. A series of interactive discussions on events that shaped Sarasota County’s past and continue to exert influence on its present and probably the future. These monthly events run from October through April. Explore our past Conversations.
These events start at 7pm in the Crocker Memorial Church. They are FREE to Historical Society members and $10 at the door for not-yet members. Bring your friends and participate in lively and informative discussions. Bidwell-Wood House is open beginning at 6pm for touring before the meetings.
No one is more aware of the importance of a great house museum to a specific community and to the wider world than Ron McCarty, the Keeper and Curator of Ca’ d’Zan, the fabulous American palace John and Mable Ringling built on Sarasota’s bayfront in the late 1920s. McCarty has been employed by the Ringling Museum longer than anyone in the history of the museum and will share Continue reading
These two experts will share facts and stories and rare Continue reading
In many ways the history of Sarasota, and indeed all of Florida, is the history of real estate. And playing a major role in that long saga of boom, bust, progress and preservation are the great developers of the past, recent past and present.
Are developers visionaries who shape the land for progress, or villains who rape the land for profit? “Nothing so absolute or dramatic,” says Harold Bubil, Real Estate Editor at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He will lead a conversation about the influence of great developers who have come to Florida to realize personal ambitions and specific visions of towns and communities rising from the sand.
This conversation takes place at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 9, at the Crocker Memorial Church, 1260 12th Street in Sarasota’s Pioneer Park. The event is free to Historical Society members and students and $10 for guests who may pay at the door.
Joining the conversation Continue reading
Two naturalists from the Sarasota Audubon Society, Jeanne Dubi and Barry Gerber, will entertain and enlighten us with an illustrated presentation, “Celery Fields, Past, Present and Future” at the January Conversation at The Crocker, Tuesday, January 12, 2016, starting at 7 p.m.
Mother and chick at the Celery Fields. I don’t know what bird this is. Guess I’ll be going to the January Conversation at the Crocker on Tuesday Jan. 12, 2016 at 7pm!
Jeanne Dubi is Continue reading
They may not look like much to you, but they’re a dream come true for the Historical Society!
A grant from the Frances T. Bourne Fund at The Community Foundation of Sarasota County has provided for the purchase of chairs to expand our seating capacity in the Crocker Memorial Church (1901) and in the Bidwell-Wood House (1882). More seating for members meetings, for weddings, seminars, music and theatrical rehearsals, for local club meetings and for community-wide events, such as Conversations at The Crocker.
“We have never been able to accommodate as many people as come to our programs. ” said Site Manager Linda Garcia. “We use, of course, the original wooden pews made by early Sarasota settler Peter Crocker and the stackable chairs we already own, but we have had standing-room-only occasions and that led to our submitting a proposal to the Community Foundation. We are so grateful that they acknowledged our need and approved the funds for additional chairs. Our members and the whole community will benefit.”
Our Vice-President, Marsha Fottler, came dressed to work, the day the chairs arrived via semi!
Besides serving the needs of the Historical Society, the Crocker Memorial Church building is available for rental and is equipped with a sound system, projector, black-out shades and now seating for 150. The historic structure is a popular destination for weddings and other celebratory events. The Historical Society considers the Crocker a model of adaptive use. Since 1901 it has been in constant use, first as a house of worship and now as a place that HSOSC and the Sarasota community use for a variety of programs and events. The Crocker has been preserved by being useful over a long span of time.
Funding for these chairs provided by the Frances T. Bourne Fund of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County.
One of the threads that ties old Sarasota County to the new is the continuing struggle concerning which historical buildings and properties should be preserved and which ones demolished as a necessary sacrifice to progress, modernization and growth. Award-winning author and historian Jeff LaHurd considers both sides of the issue when he Continue reading
Photo Credit: B. Paul Patterson on http://www.sarasota.wateratlas.usf.edu/
Marsha Fottler is one of the most active and involved members of HSoSC, and serves as vice president.
As an Historical Society, we still produce a real, hard-copy newsletter for our members and to hand out to folks interested in learning about us, joining us in membership, attending some of our many events and exploring whether we are worth financial support small or large.
Amongst myriad other tasks, our Vice President, Marsha Fottler, writes, edits, produces, and even drives to the printer, our newsletter. Be sure to thank her, next time you see her!
Here’s our Newsletter Page where you can view, download, even print out the electronic version of our current newsletter, and explore past issues as well
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Are There More Modern Buildings in Our Future?Four young turks of architecture think so. Come and hear what they have to say and what the built future of Sarasota could look like.
No matter how you feel about modern architecture, you’ll want to be in the audience on the evening of Tuesday, February 10, at 7 p.m. when Sarasota Herald-Tribune real estate editor and architecture lecturer Harold Bubil leads a conversation with four ambitious and highly talented young architects who discuss how future of Sarasota will look if they have any influence. And they do, since they’re all working on important projects in town. Joining Bubil on stage at the Crocker Memorial Church are: Tatiana White, Chris Leader, Leonardo Lunardi and Damien Blumetti. A power point presentation narrated by Harold Bubil will place the modern movement in context with Sarasota’s past styles of residential, commercial and municipal architecture.
If you’re a newcomer to town, seasonal visitor or tax paying full-time resident, you’re bound to learn a lot about buildings and homes you see everyday around town. But, you’ll also see what could be down the road for Sarasota in terms of the homes we live in and the buildings we shop in, bank in and places where we receive medical care. Are we clinging to Mediterranean revival and cottage styles or committing to leading-edge modern design based on principles of the Sarasota School of Architecture that reigned in post-war years through the 1960s? Find out and then express your own views.
Now in its third year and presented by the Historical Society of Sarasota County (HSOSC), Conversations at The Crocker is a series of interactive monthly discussions that highlight aspects of Sarasota’s history and looks at past events and people who have influenced today’s Sarasota. All Conversations take place at the historic Crocker Memorial Church in Pioneer Park, 1260 12th Street, Sarasota. Community welcome. 7 p.m. Free to HSOSC members and students; $10, guests.
The futuristic rendering appears here.
Pull
man car historian and restorer of John Ringling’s private railroad car, the Wisconsin car in Sarasota talks about rail travel of the Gilded Age and how John and Mable Ringling traveled in luxury aboard a fabulous custom car.
“It is rare for a
private railroad car
to be restored with
such care, attention to detail and respect to the historic fabric”
Ride the rails into the past with Pullman Railroad car expert and the restorer of the famed Wisconsin custom railroad car with David W. Duncan when he leads a Conversation at The Crocker, on Tuesday, January 13, starting at 7 p.m. at the Crocker Memorial Church, 1260 12th Street (Pioneer Park), Sarasota.
David W. Duncan is a Pullman Railroad car historian and he has been the consultant on the Wisconsin for The Ringling Museum. His hands-on work and expertise have been instrumental in the restoration process of this historic railroad car. Duncan will be joined on stage by Ron McCarty, Curator of Ca’d’Zan at The Ringling Museum.
A Pullman Car was a standard of luxury in the early part of the 20th century and John Ringling wanted one. Having established a relationship with the Pullman firm by buying second-hand cars for use by the circus, Ringling commissioned Pullman to build a private car for his personal use in 1904. The name Wisconsin was chosen to honor the state that was home to the Ringling brothers and their circus.
On March 16, 1905, Ringling took delivery of the Wisconsin from Pullman’s Calumet Shop. He used the car as a place to stylishly entertain and impress friends, family, business associates and politicians. And the car enabled him to conduct circus business as he traveled across the country. Ringling’s first trip aboard the car was to Baraboo, Wisconsin, the family’s hometown. Later that year, John Ringling and Mable Burton were married in Hoboken, New Jersey.
“It is rare for a private railroad car to be restored with such care, attention to detail and respect to the historic fabric,” says Ron McCarty about Duncan’s work on the Wisconsin. “Now at the museum, visitors to Sarasota can glimpse a means of transportation that only a few ever experienced. This restored jewel of the Gilded Age tells the story of a bygone era and the community can learn all about it at the Conversation at The Crocker on the evening of January 13.” All aboard !
Organized and presented by the Historical Society of Sarasota County and sponsored by SARASOTA Magazine, this public conversation (accompanied by rare photos) is free to Historical Society members and students. Guests, $10. Proceeds help maintain the two historic properties at Pioneer Park, The Bidwell-Wood House (1882, Sarasota’s oldest private residence) and the Crocker Memorial Church (1901).
The Historical Society of Sarasota County 