RINGLING ISLES
One of John's planned developments was Ringling Isles, with St. Armand's Circle at it's center. His business associate, Owen Burns, was vice president and secretary of Ringling Estates. President Warren G. Harding was expected to use the Worcester Mansion on nearby Bird Key for the Winter White House, and the hub of the circle was called Harding Circle in his honor.
Noted landscape architect John J. Watson oversaw the project. Four dredges were put into service with 400 men working on the Ritz Carlton Hotel and another four hundred putting in streets, sidewalks, wells, palm trees, the golf course, the Ringling Bridge and infrastructure improvements. The dynamic work of Burns and Ringling on the keys completely transformed the area.
On February 7, 1926, the property opened to the public. Cars and buses crossed the brand new John Ringling Bridge carrying eager sightseers and property buyers from all over the state. It was said that $1 million worth of property was sold from Ringling’s sales office. However, that same year a devastating hurricane hampered the excitement of the Florida real estate market, and soon after construction came to a virtual standstill, both on Ringling Isles and the mainland; the Great Depression soon followed.
It would be well into the 1950s before Sarasota and its outer islands began to fulfill the dream of Ringling and Burns. Today's St. Armands Circle is world renowned shopping and dining destination, and real estate prices on the "Ringling Isles" are some of the highest in the state.
THE HOUSE OF JOHN
John commissioned the construction of a palatial, 56-room mansion and hired New York architect Dwight James Baum to design it. Mable, who kept a portfolio filled with sketches, postcards and photos, wanted a home in the Venetian Gothic style of the palazzi in Venice, Italy, with Sarasota Bay serving as her Grand Canal. Construction began in 1924 and was completed two years later at a then staggering cost of $1.5 million. Five stories tall, the 36,000 square foot mansion has 41 rooms and 15 bathrooms. Mable Ringling supervised every aspect of the building, down to the mixing of the terra cotta and the glazing of the tiles. The entrance to the grounds is through the Venetian gothic gateway where the Ringlings welcomed their guests to the opulent Ca’ d’Zan, or “House of John” in the Venetian dialect.
THE MUSEUM
While traveling through Europe in search of acts for his circus, John Ringling, in the spirit of America’s wealthiest Gilded Age industrialists, began acquiring art and gradually built a significant collection. The more he collected, the more passionate and voracious a collector he became, educating himself and working with dealers. Soon after the completion of Ca’ d’Zan, John built a 21-gallery museum modeled on the Florentine Uffizi Gallery to house his treasure trove of paintings and art objects, highlighted by his collection of Old Masters, including Velazquez, Poussin, van Dyke and Rubens. The result is the museum and a courtyard filled with replicas of Greek and Roman sculpture, including a bronze cast of Michelangelo’s David. John opened the Museum of Art to the public in 1931, two years after the death of his beloved Mable, saying he hoped it would “promote education and art appreciation, especially among our young people.”
By 1929, Ringling–known around the world as "the circus king"–was sitting at the pinnacle of his career. But with the crash of the stock market that year, his fortunes took an irreversible nose-dive. Ringling not only faced a collapsed economy, but also failing health, a troubled second marriage (he had remarried after Mabel's untimely death in 1928) and some bad business investments. When he died (from pneumonia) in New York in 1936, Ringling–once listed as one of the richest men in the world–was almost penniless. But Ringling's legacy was immortalized through his extraordinary will. To protect his precious art collection from annihilation by creditors, he willed over all his holdings, including Ca d'Zan, his art museum and its contents to the State of Florida.