County Commission approves action on basis of detailed report
Another home on Siesta Key has been added to the Sarasota County Register of Historic Places, thanks to a Sarasota County Commission vote earlier this summer.
The property is located at 5528 Avenida del Mare,
The item was placed on the July 9 board meeting agenda as a Presentation Upon Request, a designation generally accorded matters that are non-controversial.
No one had signed up to address the issue, and no member of the board asked for remarks from the applicants or county staff.
Commissioner Mark Smith, a long-time Siesta resident, and an architect, made the motion to approve the historic status for the house; Commissioner Teresa Mast seconded it.
A county staff memo in the July 9 agenda packet explained that the owner of the property had submitted to the county a request for the listing on the county’s Register of Historic Places, including “supplemental materials asserting that the single-family residence on the property possesses historic significance exemplary of the International Modern Style of architecture and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The staff at the [county’s] Division of Historical Resources agree with the applicant’s claims.”
The memo added that the members of the county’s Historic Preservation Board (HPB), who reviewed the materials during their regular meeting on April 22, concurred with the Division of Historical Resources.
“The HPB found that the house retains a remarkable degree of historic integrity, possessing all seven of the attributes of integrity listed in Section 66-114(b) of the Code,” the memo added.
Further, the memo noted, the County Commission “previously approved historic designation for two similar buildings in the same neighborhood …” Those stand at 5546 and 5540 Avenida del Mare, the memo said.
Those designations came in 2021, the memo added.
History of Siesta and the house itself
In the July 9 agenda packet, the materials regarding the request for historic designation of the property located at 5528 Avenida del Mare referenced information from Karl Grismer in The Story of Sarasota. Grismer explained that the keys along the county’s coast “remained relatively isolated from the mainland until 1917, when the first bridge was constructed between the barrier island and the mainland. “In the 1880s however a few homesteaders began settling [on Siesta]. They weren’t attracted to the keys by the rich shell-hammock lands or by the beautiful, hard-packed, sparkling beaches,” Grismer continued. Instead, he noted, “[T]hey went there simply because the Florida Internal Improvement Board had practically stopped homesteading on the mainland in 1883 by deeding away almost all the land to speculators. For some strange reason, the politicians and land grabbers happened to miss the keys — so there the homesteaders went.”
Then the document pointed out, “The City of Sarasota and Siesta Key experienced an unprecedented period of growth during the post-World War One period, which came to be known as the Sarasota Land Boom, 1919-1927.
“Immediately after the war,” the document said, “real estate activity quickened, [ultimately] rising to a frenzied pitch. Property values rose dramatically in virtually every city and town across the state, as new subdivisions were platted, and lots sold and resold for quick profits. Building design was strongly influenced by Mediterranean architecture as developers and architects attempted to capitalize upon Florida’s Spanish heritage. Buildings large and small were designed in a variety of Mediterranean Revival styles including Spanish Eclectic and Mission Styles.”
However, the document pointed out, little building took place during the early years of the Great Depression, in the 1930s. Yet, when World War II was underway, and in its aftermath — up to 1966 — “Sarasota County experienced a population explosion.” The count of 19,000 residents in 1945 climbed to 120,413 in 1970, it said. Accounts about Siesta Key in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s described “an island getaway far removed from the bustle of development further north in the City of Sarasota.”
The ’Lamolithic’ houses and the Sarasota School of Architecture
In 1990, a Coastal Zone Survey of Sarasota County was published, the document pointed out. It identified “several concentrations of historic structures on Siesta Key,” the document said. In fact, the document noted, the Surveyrecommended “that Sarasota Beach, the location of the [structure standing at 5528 Avenida del Mare,] be considered for a potential historic district.”
Therefore, the house standing at 5540 Avenida del Mare was recorded in what is known as the Florida Master Site File, which lists historic properties.
No listing for 5528 Avenida del Mare exists in Sarasota city directories until 1955, the document added.
The document further explained, “The Lamolithic House at 5528 Avenida Del Mare was built by John ‘Jack’ Lambie Jr. as were many other Lamolithic Houses in the Sarasota region from the 1920s until the time of his sudden death in 1958 at the age of 59. Lambie was a founder of St Boniface Episcopal Church and was a senior warden there. He was also President and Treasurer of Lamolithic Buildings Inc.”
Another section of the document noted, “According to an article published in The Architectural Forum Magazine of Building in October of 1948, the Lamolithic Method of Construction was inspired by research done by Thomas Edison into the feasibility of mass-producing concrete homes. J.E. Lambie, Sr., a founder and half-owner of the Foreign Division of General Motors, developed the necessary building equipment in 1923. It consisted of automatic mixing and conveying machinery and a modular system of lightweight forms. The term Lamolithic was a combination of Lambie’s name and the word lithic, meaning made of stone. At the time of publication J.E. Lambie Jr. was identified as the head of Lamolithic Industries.”
The house located at 5528 Avenida del Mare “was designed by architect Ralph Twitchell and associate architect Paul Rudolph,” the document added. “Twitchell and Rudolph are recognized as founding members of Sarasota’s modern architectural movement which came to be known as the Sarasota School of Architecture. … An ambition of the movement was to create modern designs for Sarasota’s unique sub-tropic climate,” the document noted.
In their book titled Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses, Christopher Domin and Joseph King wrote that the “Lamolithic Houses represent Rudolph’s first opportunity to experiment with a more urban design approach. The compact site [on Avenida del Mare] encompassed four housing units with shared Lamolithic privacy walls, defining inner and outer space, as well as private and public space. Despite its small footprint, Rudolph was able to create the illusion of expanded volume by staggering the open-plan structures on the site,” the document said.
“The house at 5528 Avenida Del Mare has a form that is nearly square [36 feet wide by 31 feet deep] on the original part of the building,” the document continued. “The house was constructed using a poured in place concrete process for the roof and walls known as the Lamolithic Method. The rough poured concrete originally served as the finish wall surface. The walls of the original portion of the house have been coated with a heavy stucco finish. The concrete roof is supported by lally columns which were originally exposed in the interior and exterior. [The website thisoldhouse.com says, “Lally columns provide foundational support for buildings of all sizes. These steel columns, typically filled with concrete, play a vital role in distributing weight and reinforcing structures.] Those [columns] on the exterior have been boxed in. The building has a simple layout with an open plan living room and kitchen along with two bedrooms and a bathroom as original spaces. To the west of the front bedroom is a small addition that contains an additional bathroom and a walk-in closet.”
In its Conclusion, the document explained, “The Lamolithic House at 5528 Avenida Del Mare possesses integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, association and feeling as demonstrated by its continued existence in its original location. Lamolithic design attributes including a flat roof, Lally columns and large windows, placement within a setting of four similar houses, poured concrete exterior, simple utilitarian workmanship, association with builder John Lambie, and feeling of a modest beach front residence built of materials meant to last.”