Ron McCarty filled the Crocker Church in Pioneer Park on April 12 for his lecture on the secrets of Ca’ d’Zan.
He should know them all. As keeper and curator of the 1925 John and Mable Ringling mansion, he has served longer as a Ringling museums employee than anyone in its history.
Ron McCarty displays a photograph of "Ca' d'Zan" under construction in 1924 or 1925. The photograph is important as a visual record of how the John and Mable Ringling Mansion was constructed during the final years of the Gilded Age. Maintaining the state-owned structure is a full-time job for McCarty, "keeper" of the ornate mansion. Completed in 1925, it is considered one of the nation's most important publicly owned mansions. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 8-31-2012.
Speaking for the Historical Society of Sarasota County’s “Conversations at the Crocker” series, McCarty shared many details of the house’s construction, its rehabilitation and its ongoing maintenance.
McCarty is also an expert on John and Mable themselves. He calls the mansion “Mable’s house” because it was Mrs. Ringling who worked closely with Dwight James Baum on its design.
Among the tidbits he shared:
— The house is the largest and most expensive of three in the Ringling family compound on North Sarasota Bay. The Charles and Edith Ringling Mansion cost $850,000, the Hester Ringling Mansion $750,000 and the John and Mable Ringling mansion $1.5 million. All were built in the mid-1920s.
— What kind of man builds a $1.5 million mansion in 1925? The 13th richest in America, that’s who. “Mr. John” was worth $200 million at the height of the Florida land boom, McCarty said. That is more than $2.7 billion today. The mansion cost $20.5 million in today’s dollars.
— Of course, it was not the Ringlings’ main home. They had several homes, including a 100-acre estate in New Jersey; its house has been torn down.
— The restoration of Ca’ d’Zan, from the mid-1990s to 2002, cost $15 million.
— Parts of the building, including the tower, had been closed for 20 years, starting in the 1970s, because of the building’s deterioration. The state had neither the will nor the funds to maintain it. It was a venue for weddings and not much else.
— McCarty said the mansion was in horrible shape before the restoration, with terra cotta balusters broken away on the steps leading to the tower, and silk wallpaper sagging from the walls. He credits chief conservator Michelle Scalera, “my best friend for 20 years,” for her expert role in its restoration. McCarty was a registar, in charge of the objects in the collection, back then.
— It took three years to restore the terrace overlooking the bay — and FEMA paid for it. McCarty was very happy about that.
— McCarty compares Ca’ d’Zan to the Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, among important house museums, and puts it on a par with Florida’s other two Gilded Age mansions, Henry Flagler’s Whitehall in Palm Beach and James Deerings’ Viscaya in Miami. “It is the equal of any historic mansion in America,” he said. Others agree. He said the director of the Biltmore Estate has great respect for the Ringling palace, and 400,000 visitors a year share that feeling.
— John Ringling was a great collector, and furnished the house with fixtures and furniture from other great residences, including some in Europe. He bought three rooms out of the Astor mansion in New York; it was later demolished.
— The Ringling’s campus “is always going through a metamorphosis and blossoming in a different way,” he said. “The most exciting part,” he said, is meeting Ringling family members. They bring “the human side” to the story.
What is not so well known is that in the middle of the house’s renovation, in 1999, McCarty was in a serious automobile accident in which he suffered broken bones in his face and brain damage from a collision with the steering wheel. He said his shoulder harness was faulty.
The accident put him out of commission for six weeks, but as his was a key role in the badly needed restoration, he did not let the accident stop him from his mission. His full recovery enabled him to finish the project and continue on as the building’s keeper, watching over it and calling in experts to fix any little thing that looks suspicious.
Even this attentive care cannot prevent everything that can happen to an elaborate mansion exposed as it is on the edge of Sarasota Bay. Water finds its way into cracks, steel underpinnings can rust, and soon you have terra cotta details falling off the facade.
As if that weren’t enough, the house needs a roof rehab, which should cost about $1 million in 2017.
“The house is right on the water. You have to stay on top of everything,” he said.
McCarty, 61, has set a goal to see that through. He would like to serve five more years, until his 40th anniversary at The Ringling.
Then he would like to spend more time pursuing his true artistic talent — fine art. He is an accomplished painter of landscapes, with almost photographic detailing.
Read my interview with Ron online at realestate.heraldtribune.com.
