Ringling’s splendor
If you haven’t discovered the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and the Ringling mansion estate in Sarasota, you must go. It is definitely worth the two-hour drive from Brooksville.
John Ringling, co-owner of the Ringling Bros. Circus, was a son of a hardworking but poor immigrant but became a very wealthy businessman in the circus business and other business ventures in oil, real estate and the railroad.
Ringling and his wife, Mable, first came to Florida in 1909 to spend winters after the traveling circus season. They bought their first home together in Sarasota in 1911. While Ringling traveled to conduct business, Mable soon began to spend more and more time in Sarasota with friends and family as guests.
In 1924, John and Mable started building their future Sarasota winter dream home mansion to entertain even more guests. They named their dream home Ca’ d’Zan, a Venetian dialect for “House of John.” Through her many European travels with John, Mable fell in love with the villas and palaces of the Italian city of Venice. She brought back her personal scrapbook of photos, sketches and postcards to show examples of what she wanted to her architect, Dwight James Baum, to build in Sarasota.
Ringling gave carte blanche to his wife to design, furnish and decorate the home as she wished. It soon blossomed to a total cost of $1.5 million to complete. And that was in 1926.
It took almost two years to build the five-story, waterfront mansion overlooking Sarasota Bay, with 41 rooms and 15 bathrooms. The abode holds 36,000 square feet of living space for guests, servant quarters, and private spaces for the owners. The grand house even has a full basement, which is quite unusual for Florida. John even had his own “man cave” game room, which included his billiard and poker tables. He also had his own private bar lounge room, furnished with the actual bar and leaded stained glass panels from one of his favorite restaurants in St. Louis, Mo., appropriately named Cicardi Winter Palace.
The home was very state-of-the art for the time, complete with both an electric and gas range and a large electric refrigerator in the kitchen, and an elevator. The house also has an Aeolian duo-art pipe organ, with 2,289 pipes installed in a chamber hidden behind tapestries on the second-floor balcony.
The ornate mansion oozes opulence and grandeur. The crystal chandelier over the main floor’s living room was later added by John Ringling from the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, which was torn down in 1929, and hangs over the beautiful black-and-white checkered marble tiled floor. John Ringling’s private bathroom’s tub was carved from one huge block of marble. The sunlight pouring in through the many-colored glass windows adds to the ambience of all the rooms. John and Mable were avid art collectors and had various works of art and paintings throughout the house.. Mable also had artists paint murals on the ceilings throughout the home.
The furnishings are quite regal and command notice. The whole rear of the house overlooks the 8,000-square-foot waterfront terrace covered with marble tile. The original gatehouse to the estate, matching in architectural style to the mansion, now serves as the public entrance to the museum complex.
The crowning glory of the Florida Venetian-Gothic styled palazzo is its 81-foot tall Belvedere tower with its open-air landing on the fourth floor.
In November 1926, John and Mable Ringling enjoyed their first winter in their new Sarasota mansion and estate of 66 acres. But their winter paradise would be short-lived. Mable Ringling died in June 1929, at the age of 54, from Addison’s disease further complicated by diabetes.
After Mable’s death, John threw himself into another construction project on the Sarasota estate, an art museum to house his vast collection.
“People thought he was crazy to build an art museum in Sarasota at the time,” said Toby Kline, one of the art museum’s docents.
Construction had begun in 1927, but after Mable’s death, John was even more resolved to finish the museum to perpetuate the memory of Mable. In October 1931, the museum officially opened to the public as The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.
The 21-gallery museum on the estate houses a collection of paintings and sculptures from Italian, French, Spanish, Dutch, British and American artists, such as Rubens, van Dyck, Velazquez, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, El Greco, Gainsborough and more. The museum is home to many baroque and Renaissance works of art.
In 1952, the historic 18th-century Asolo Theatre, a work of art in of itself, was opened at the Ringling estate. This Italian palace playhouse was created in 1798 in Asolo, Italy. It was dismantled in the 1930s and acquired by German antiquarian Adolf Loewi. Later in 1947, it was purchased by the first executive director of the Ringling Museum. In 2006, after years of restoration, it was reopened to showcase theater, opera, music, dance, film and lectures.
Along with Ca’ d’Zan, the art museum, and the historic Asolo Theatre, the estate also has a circus museum with many circus artifacts and memorabilia, such as circus costumes and circus posters, but also some very large pieces such as ornate parade wagons. Also on exhibit is John and Mable’s private railcar built in 1905 that they used to travel with the circus on the railroad. The “piece de resistance” of the circus museum is its world’s largest miniature circus exhibit. The model is a replica of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1919 – 1938.
The Ringling Museum of Art and estate is at 5401 Bay Shore Road in Sarasota. Take exit 213 off I-75 (University Parkway exit) and travel westbound on University Parkway for about 5 miles toward the Sarasota/Bradenton airport. At Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41), University Parkway dead ends into the entrance of the museum.
For more information, call the museum at (941) 359-5700 or visit
ringling.org.
Heather Francis is a correspondent for Hernando Today. She can be reached at toheatherfrancis (at) gmail.com.
