FLORIDA PLACE TO EXPLORE
Ca' d'Zan
Sarasota County · Gulf Coast
The Ringlings' 56-room Venetian Gothic house on Sarasota Bay, finished in 1926 in two years of building.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
The name is Venetian dialect for House of John. John and Mable Ringling had been to Venice often enough to want a palazzo of their own on the bay, and they hired Dwight James Baum to design it, with Owen Burns building. It went up in two years and was finished in 1926: 36,000 square feet and 56 rooms, Mediterranean in its bones with Moorish detail laid over it, arched windows, patterned tilework, balconies and a tower over the middle of it. Mable Ringling worked alongside Baum on the decoration and furnishing, and much of what a visitor sees was her choosing rather than an architect's. The marble terrace runs down to Sarasota Bay, where the Ringlings kept their boat, and the view west across the water at the end of the day is the reason the house faces the way it does. It stands at the edge of the Ringling estate grounds and is toured from the museum
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