THE SETTLING OF SARASOTA (32nd in a series)

Sarasota in the nifty fifties was a busy place.

• Cecil B. DeMille filmed “The Greatest Show on Earth.
• The Asolo Theater was brought from Italy and installed in the Ringling Museum of Art.
• US Route 41 was rerouted to follow the downtown bay front, adding a new island park and marina.
• Riverview High School and Brookside Middle School were built.
• The Herald Tribune returned to being a morning newspaper and moved into its new building on US 41.
• The Asolo Theater opened with a presentation of the New York City Center Opera Company.
• The Ringling Shopping Center, Sarasota’s first, opened in 1955 and Publix was the key occupant.
• Sarasota was the first city in Florida to have a Golden Arches (McDonald’s) restaurant.
• The first Miss Florida Pageant was held in Sarasota in 1956.
• The Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus gave its last performance under the big top in Pittsburgh on July 16, 1956. It required 90 railroad cars to move the circus around the country.
• A red tide outbreak of catastrophic proportion in 1957 killed thousands of marine animals in the Gulf between Clearwater and Naples. Prisoners were used to clean up the dead fish.
• A hard freeze (20 degrees F.) hit Sarasota on the 12th and 13th of December 1957 and did millions of dollars of damage to vegetable crops and livestock.
• The Arvida Corporation, founded by Arthur Vining Davis purchased the southern half of Longboat Key, all of Bird Key, and most of Lido Key from the Ringling Estate for 13.5 million dollars.
• The Sailor Circus, a part of the Sarasota High School gymnastics program, erected tents on the high school football field and performed aerial acts in the open. A 30 minute short subject was filmed by Warner Brothers and shown in theaters world-wide.
• Negro golfers played the Bobbie Jones Golf Course for the first time.

Sarasota was a city with small town ambiance.

(To Be Continued)..

(C) Copyright, 2009 - Leland Desmon.
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