Architect Tim Seibert and homeowner Freya Cole at her home on Casey Key. Seibert designed the house in 1965 for Freya Cole's father. It is for sale at $1,985,000. Seibert was making his first visit to the house since its completion. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 7-8-2014.
At a little-known 1965 house on Casey Key. Tim Seibert made it look easy. But he's not sure he could be an architect today
The days of having to please clients and contractors long behind him, Tim Seibert is not afraid to speak his mind with wit and wisdom.
"Today, I wouldn't be an architect," he recently announced. "I would go on food stamps and build a boat." The retired favorite designer of many architecture buffs, Seibert occasionally makes the trek from his home in Boca Grande to Sarasota to visit structures he designed 50 or more years ago. He also gives public lectures — more like reminiscences than academic impartings of knowledge — about his career and work, and he'll give another at 1 p.m. Aug. 24, at 3727 Sandspur Lane on Casey Key. There, a hidden, modest modern house he designed in 1965 for Mr. and Mrs. Otto Knopp has come on the market for the first time. Otto Knopp's daughter, Freya Cole, has listed the property, overlooking Little Sarasota Bay at the end of a narrow, sandy path, through Nicole Hammons-Dovgopolyi of Michael Saunders & Co., at $2 million.
Earlier this month, Seibert dropped by Sandspur Lane as the Sarasota Architectural Foundation's Janet Minker and Dan Snyder previewed the house. SAF is presenting the lecture.
"It looks just the same," the architect said, thinking back 49 years.
The home of Freya Cole at 3727 Sandspur Lane on Casey Key. The house, designed in 1965 by Tim Seibert, is for sale for the first time at $1,985,000. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 7-8-2014.
But architecture was "so different then," he said. "Even the Architects Journal has had an article about how we are going to run out of architects because nobody wants to put up with all of it. It is 12 and a half years from high school to licensure. I got out of school (the University of Florida) in January '53 and opened my office in March '55."
"If it hadn't been for Phil," he said, referring to Phil Hiss, who gave prime commissions to many "Sarasota school" architects, "and Paul (Rudolph), I probably would not have made it.
"They taught me things. Phil was bright; we wouldn't have New College if not for Phil.
"I met him at a cocktail party in 1950. I was broke and he offered me a job as a draftsman."
Seibert drafted the plans for the 1950 Hiss Residence, now demolished, on Westway Drive in Lido Shores.
"It was the first truly modern house in Sarasota," said Seibert, including in that statement the famous Revere Quality House done by Rudolph and Ralph Twitchell on Siesta Key 1947; it is still standing on Garden Lane near the north end of the key.
Soon, Seibert had his own office and was designing and building his own house.
"Architecture is not that hard, really," he said.
The good ones, though, make it look easy. On Casey Key, Seibert did just one design for client Otto Knopp, the architect recalls.
"He was a very pleasant guy to work for. We hit it off, and the first design was what became this house," Seibert said.
Otto Knopp was a patent attorney in Connecticut before retiring to Casey Key. He died in 1979, and his daughter began using the house the following year.
Built to last
John Ennis built the house, and "he supplied some excellent carpenters," Seibert said. "All the posts and beams were nice and true."
The house blends wooden post-and-beam construction with white masonry portions that appear cube-like from the outside. It is a very 1960s way of expressing a Sarasota School building — more bulk and strength, less fragility of wood and glass.
"It is all good heart pine put together with iron rods put down into pre-drilled holes."
When asked how the wood was assembled so it does not absorb moisture from the concrete, Seibert was stumped. "See, I told you the world was a lot better back then."
The view of Little Sarasota Bay from the home of Freya Cole at 3727 Sandspur Lane on Casey Key. The house is for sale for the first time at $1,985,000. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 7-8-2014.
There is plenty of glass nonetheless. The Knopp house has a view of Little Sarasota Bay, through a wall of sliding-glass doors, that is only slightly impeded by a row of mangroves on the shoreline. They are trimmed low, except for taller trees with foliage at the top, creating gaps through which the water can be seen. Rowing sculls occasionally pass by, the athletes' muscular forms slicing through the tranquility.
"The mangroves were not trimmed back then. That is a very Rudolphian scene," said Seibert, referring to his mentor, the legendary modernist whose career began in Sarasota.
"Paul's renderings showed the mangroves like that. He perhaps even invented that."
Rules for both mangroves and buildings were less rigid in the 1960s, the architect recalled.
"You were an architect and you didn't have a bunch of bureaucrats to deal with," he said. "And (now) when you are done, some lawyer comes to sue you to see if you've got it all in your computer.
"The world has changed enormously. I supposed all old guys feel that way, but a lot of young guys are beginning to catch on to this, that life is not supportable."
Finding a buyer
Cole, who plans to stay in the Sarasota area, might not agree. Life at the house, she said, has been "wonderful. It is so easy ... easy to get around, easy to take care of. The flow works beautifully."
Her Realtor, Nicole Hammons-Dovgopolyi, said pricing such a house is a challenge.
At 2,000 square feet on 0.83 acres with deeded beach access, "it is a small house that lives big," she said. "The home is difficult (to market) because it is not a newly constructed home, but it is special. A lot of these Casey properties pass from generation to generation.
"The buyer has to want to live on the waterfront and understand the architecture," Hammons-Dovgopolyi said. "Local people get it; sophisticated, big-city buyers have been through this house. What I hope is that the buyer doesn't come in and corrupt it by being too heavy-handed.
"It sits beautifully on this lot, and you can see it from the swing bridge," the single-lane, 1925 truss bridge that links Casey Key to the mainland at Blackburn Point Road.
"We listed it a little late for the season," Hammons-Dovgopolyi said, "but the reception has been positive. People walk in the front door and stop and pause. To have the significance of the architecture coupled with the location is spectacular.
"The privacy is enchanting."
Information on the Seibert lecture and house tour is online at SarasotaAr
