We have had two lovely days exploring around Sarasota. Yesterday we drove to St Armand’s Circle which is near the sea in Sarasota which is a lovely arts and cultural community on the Gulf coast. It’s a lovely traditional Florida town and writ large in its history is the family of John and Mable Ringling, circus magnates in the early 20th century, the successors of Barnum. Sarasota was the winter home of their mega circus. It’s about 20 minutes from Danny’s house.
St. Armands Circle was their vision of a posh shopping area. The Ringlings transported all the building materials for the original planned community via a paddle-wheel steamboat called “Success,” then had a bridge built to connect St. Armands Key and Bird Key to the Sarasota mainland in 1926.
We had a good mooch around the shops of the circle and admired the statues and beautiful plants and trees. We then had lunch in the Columbia restaurant, a rather famous Cuban place that started in Ybor City in Tampa and then opened here too. A lovely open air room with very good service and great food. We started with their famous salad which is prepared at the table and consists of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, olives, shredded smoked ham, grated parmesan and grated manchego, pink peppercorns and a dressing of lemon, garlic and oil. It was really good. We then shared a large Cuban sandwich and three plates of tapas: crab croquettes, large prawns in garlic butter and mushrooms stuffed with garlic, spinach, cheese…. Everything was absolutely yum.
After that we drove around the old main street of Sarasota, an area I remember from a visit in the late 70s. It’s an avenue of two storey, Spanish style buildings complete with an opera house, a ballet theatre and a large number of restaurants, high end boutiques and bars. There are lovely street lamps. These days Main st. is somewhat dwarfed by large blocks of condos but it’s still an attractive place.
We drove out to Celery Fields an area of parkland with a great deal of lakes and waterways, a paradise for birds. We clambered to the top of a large mesa shaped hill and hiked around that for a bit enjoying the views.
Today we went back to Sarasota, this time to visit the Ringling Museum Mission and History – The Ringling a wonderful circus museum and art museum created in the garden and grounds of the Ringling Mansion.
The gardens are just lovely and it is a real pleasure to walk around them enjoying the landscaping and the birds and creatures making their homes there. We saw a lot of turtles – big ones – in one of the ponds.
The Circus Museum is just amazing, well worth the visit all on its own. There are many restored items there from the 19th century/early 20th Century high era of the circus plus some small film clips showing the excitement when the mammoth circuses rolled into town. The Ringling circus often employed over 1500 men just to service the tents and the camp. Then there were all the performers, the side shows and the exotic animals. Most places in America, like in Europe at the time, did not have zoos, so this was a chance for people to see animals previously only read about. The circuses would largely travel by train – hundreds of special wagons and cars and it was a huge logistical effort as often they would set up, perform and get-out all in 24 hours. The Ringlings had their own luxury rail car which is exhibited there. One of the photos below shows the cannon some performers were fired out of!!
One huge highlight is a model circus made by a man called Howard Tibbal. It is a huge misjustice to call it a model circus. Rather it is a masterpiece, his life’s work of over 50 years in which he made thousands of figures, 5000 working folding chairs, model carriages, animals, trains, cars, huge tents – everything to scale and worked from hundreds of photographs from the time. It really is an extraordinary sight to see, taking up a whole floor of the museum and employing lighting effects so that day passes to night as you walk around the displays. I would urge anyone who is in the area to visit and see the museum. My photos do not begin to do justice to the scale and the craftmanship of the models.
As mentioned there is also an extraordinary art museum displaying the accumulated art and objets of the Ringling family particularly Rubens and many examples of the art of Renaissance Italy. There are also galleries of Chinese and Indian artifacts.
We were there for nearly 4 hours and thoroughly enjoyed it.