The front of the house at 227 Delmar. It's on the National Register of Historic Places and was built in 1925. It is famous because it was owned (and decorated) by A. Everett "Chick" Austin, the first director of the Ringling Museum of Art from 1946 until 1957, when he died of lung cancer. (March 11, 2013) (Herald-Tribune staff photo by Dan Wagner)
The Sarasota Architectural Foundation is offering a rare look inside one of Sarasota’s most fascinating boomtime houses.
The Chick Austin House is the site of a lecture, house tour and garden party from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday, May 21.
The house, at 227 Delmar Ave., was built in 1925 by Whitfield Estates contractor Thomas Monk, but lavishly renovated in the 1940s and ’50s by the first executive director of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, A. Everett “Chick” Austin.
It is listed for sale at $869,000 by Coldwell Banker’s Gwen Kruse.
At 7 p.m. in the house’s 40- by 20-foot ballroom, lecturer Eugene Gaddis will present “The Baroque and the Modern: Chick Austin’s Extraordinary Architecture.” Gaddis is the archivist and curator of the Austin House, owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum museum in Hartford, Connecticut. Austin, then in his mid-40s, came from the Wadsworth in 1946 to head the Ringling.
Gaddis also wrote a biography of Austin titled “Magician of the Modern: Chick Austin and the Transformation of the Arts in America.”
Austin, who became director of the Ringling Museum after Florida won control of the 66-acre Ringling property in probate court, served until his death in 1957 from lung cancer.
Austin is credited with bringing the Asolo Theater from Italy to the museum and promoting the museum’s collection of baroque art to a national audience.
His house became a leading party venue. Guests included actresses Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury, Prince Rainer of Monaco and entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee.
Also on the program: At 6 p.m., Ron McCarty, curator and keeper of Cà d’Zan, will present a lecture on the house titled “Villa Cirque.” Columnist Bob Plunket, of Sarasota magazine, will discuss the social history of Sarasota in the 1940s and ’50s.
Tickets are $40 for SAF members, $50 for nonmembers and $15 for fulltime students with ID. Register at saf-srq.org.
