An historic look at Sarasota County

If it’s too wet or too hot some day soon, take a comfy meander through the archives of the Sarasota news, courtesy of Google News.

You never know what you might find… like

Get out those recipe boxes…

It’s time, once more, for

Giving our members and visitors a hand

Directors Ron McCarty and Linda Garcia confer recently with Sarasota City Planner Dr. Clifford Smith over what type of hand rails would be historically appropriate on the Crocker Memorial Church.

The need for rails has been evident since

Sunshine, scenery, and some daubs of color!

Both our historic buildings, the Bidwell-Wood House (1882) and the Crocker Memorial Church (1901), attract admiring passing glances in Pioneer Park. But these plein air (“open-air”) painters enjoyed

Come dig us… or dig WITH us!

Calling All Gardeners*

Marsha Fottler, Landscape Committee Chair

If pulling weeds, planting, pruning and spreading mulch are strategies you embrace for relieving stress and getting exercise, your Historical Society has a opportunity you can’t pass up – a work day at the Bidwell-Wood House garden on Saturday, May 4, 2013 from 9 a.m. until about 1 p.m. Bring your own garden tools and gloves. Mulch will be supplied as well as cold drinks. Also, if you have any plants you want to donate to the landscape bring them along (Ed. note: Drop them off; you don’t have to DIG if you have other plans!) and integrate them into our members’ growing collection. The aim to have the members’garden in tip-top condition for our annual meeting and potluck picnic on May 11. Give an hour and help the garden to grow!

* Pinnies and gaiters optional.

Do you have… or will you help get… what Linda needs?

Linda, our Site Manager and Board member, has issued our Spring Wish List. Might you have/ know of/ be willing to contribute to any of these needs at the Historical Society? She’d love to hear from you!

Maybe it’s just $30 for flashlights. Maybe you can strongarm your talented specialist buddy into tuning the organ. Or maybe it’s something in between. Even something as humble as donating paper goods can help us preserve, protect, and polish the Bidwell-Wood House and the Crocker Church in Pioneer Park.

Click for the Wish List.

After you choose what you can fund, let Linda know if you would like to be acknowledged her on the blog, or if you’d rather keep your good works to yourself. And as they say nowadays, TIA (Thanks in Advance!)

The Herb Garden

by Marsha Fottler, Chair, Landscape Committee

The HSOSC herb Garden is near the detached kitchen at the Bidwell-Wood House. In past times (and now) it would have been appropriate to plant an herb and limited vegetable garden near the kitchen for the convenience of the cook. Our garden is mostly for demonstration but this year’s crop of cherry tomatoes is pretty tasty.

After the front-yard garden and the brick pathways were installed at the Bidwell-Wood House (see Florida-friendly plants at the Historical Society) , our members thought it would be educationally useful to build an herb garden near the detached kitchen.

Such a garden would

We’re excited!

Crocker Church is all ready to host YOUR event!

Our campus in Pioneer Park has been bustling this past week: visitors and shoppers and even some alumni!

Plein Air painters, city planners, and some pony-tailed guy installing a bird bath. People playing instruments, people discussing books, people having lunch on the Back Porch. Weeders in our herb garden, butterflies all over, and even some folks who were looking for the Manatee Historical Park.

If your group, family, club need a centrally-located, historic, pleasant place for a gathering, and if you want to help us protect, preserve, and polish two of the oldest buildings in Sarasota County, visit our Facility Rentals page, then give us a call!

Has it been a memorable year for your family? Make it an historical year!

As another “season” draws to a close here in Sarasota County, it’s time, naturally enough, for Historical Society fans, members, and followers to look back.

Did something memorable happen

How Sarasota Became a Performing Arts Destination

A panel of performing arts experts discusses how Sarasota evolved into a thriving performing arts community that attracts both tourists and permanent residents. This Conversation at the Crocker is the seventh in a series of year-long panel discussions organized and produced by the Historical Society of Sarasota County with support from SARASOTA Magazine.

There is more to the Sarasota area than great beaches, a welcoming climate and key lime pie. Tourists and those moving to our shores know that Sarasota offers a lively performing arts community with its own opera house, ballet company, symphony, theaters galore, choral music, jazz, you name it. We’re a small vibrant city with the

performing arts amenities of a much larger metropolis.

Howard Millman will chair the panel in April at the Historical Society’s Conversation at the Crocker

But it didn’t happen overnight or without concentrated effort by both visionary professionals and talented volunteers. Learn how Sarasota became a performing arts destination when a panel of experts led by esteemed director Howard Millman takes the stage at The Crocker Memorial Church on Tuesday, April 9, at 7 p.m. for a conversation among colleagues that reveals how and why Sarasota celebrates the performing arts.

It’s big business in this town.

Appearing with Howard Millman (theater) on April 9, will be

Rah Rah Riverview High!

Click for photography credits.

The Historical Society extends its best wishes for Riverview High School’s two History Bowl Teams, heading for the National History Bowl in Washington DC in April.

Click to learn more about History Bowl

The junior and senior History Bowl team members take rigorous history courses, including AP European History, AP U.S. History, IB history of the Americas and AP world history. Perhaps some day, we could hear them on Sarasota County history!

Here’s the Sarasota Herald-Trib article.

History Bowl logo from here; photo of Riverview High School from here.

Life is a Circus, at least in Sarasota

In 1927 on this date, John Ringling announced that Sarasota would become the winter quarters of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In 1960, Ringling moved its winter quarters to Venice and the impact of the circus expanded into the larger Sarasota County area.

Get a fun circus poster here.

Where’s Big Bertha now? How does Brooklyn sound? Read about the circus, 2013: A New York Times article.

Thanks to J. Whitcomb Rylee, http://www.sarasotacircushistory.com/,  Lynn Harding, http://www.visitsarasota.org/, and the State Archives of Florida.

Local authors and their books!

We’re so happy that the selection of books by local authors and on local subjects is growing every day in our Gift Shop! Watch

Florida-friendly plants at the Historical Society

How Our Garden Grows

A history and update of the gardens at the Sarasota Historical Society
By Marsha Fottler, HSOSC Board VP and Landscaping Chair

After the Bidwell-Wood House and the Crocker Memorial Church came to rest side-by-side at Pioneer Park in 2006, the land in front of and surrounding the buildings were sprinkled with car-friendly white gravel and some green ground cover. The property was already home to some trees – pines, palms and an imposing pig-nut hickory. Catering to the needs of the two historic structures was paramount; the ground they sat upon, not so much.

Then three years ago,

A Short History of Florida, in full color, online, and free.

Summing up an entire state and 500 years of history in 14 graphic-filled pages isn’t easy, but The Museum of Florida History has done it!

Click here.