Notes from the Nemenator

St Augustine may have been around for a while—try 1535—but it got a new life in 1888 when Henry Morrison Flagler decided to build the Ponce de Leon hotel there. Two young architects (combined age=25) from McKim, Mead, and White came down to build the Moorish-Beaux Arts mashup of a building. The opulent wintering hotel is now home to Flager College. A few choice pics follow.

The original dining room is still the dining room, but more cafeteria than gourmet these days. Those windows are by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

more Tiffany windows, and murals by George Maynard.

The largest piece of onyx in America:

By the way, the young architects did pretty alright after the Ponce. As Carrere & Hastings, the pair brought us the New York Public Library.

Yesterday we learned all about the modern architecture on Florida’s west coast. Actually, the four of us mostly just looked at some of Sarasota’s mid-century highlights from the interior of a very compact Mercedes Benz, but there’s a bunch of knowledge on the interweb, and I’ll try to link the pics up accordingly.

We followed the advice of Jessica, who wrote about some of the town’s highlights for the Orlando Weekly a little ways back. First stop was Lido Shores, which boasted two beauts. The Hiss Studio:

And the Rudolph Umbrella House, sans umbrella.

Once I claimed the navigator seat proper (directing from the back middle wasn’t going so well), we went back to the mainland for the Paul Rudolph addition to Sarasota High School. Rudolph, who has since made a national name for himself, did much of his early work in Sarasota. This work, from 1958, was slated to be torn down, but hope is brewing.

Just across Bahia Vista is the Victor Lundy Church complex. There were three buildings of with these same parabolic roofs: two with glass walls like this, and one made of some serious ce-ment.

Then, back to the peninsula for the best part: Paul Rudolph and Ralph Twitchell’s Revere House on Siesta Key. Instead of adding onto the building (which was a wee pip of a glass thing), the architect Guy Peterson built the gorgeous addition next to it. Also skinny, but placed almost perpendicular, so the two really engaged in an exciting way. The low part to the right of the red wall is the Rudolph original:

it’s see thru!

a bedroom window

Here are the glamor shots of the new building:

To top it all off, there was public art along Tatami Trail. Here’s Frances in the middle of an assemblage by Dustin Shuler.

A giant tooth with plastic people.

We came back the park off Tatami to check out the sunset.

t-minus four weeks for art basel, one of miami’s—and the art world’s—main events. i went south for a rendezvous with friends, and we deliberately opted for beaches over museums (the little guy on my right shoulder’s PO’ed). but even without the benefit of the city’s art museums, we saw a bit of the city’s latent art. which is to say, Mr. Britto.

just down the road from britto HQ, we happened upon miami beach’s sleepless night, an all-night event sponsored by the city’s cultural arts council. i saw, and liked, this piece by mitch markel.

we tried, rather unsuccessfully to see some of the area’s other venues. once we’d tracked down a map (harder than it sounded), my companions had lost some of the spirit of said adventure. we knew italians were doing a performance piece with mattresses on ocean drive at 4 am, but we lost steam well earlier than even the old 4. and while they meant well for the 13 hour thing, some people have a real hard time keeping the whole spring forward/fall back straight in an hour-by-hour schematic program guide.

A bright light on the strip was the art center/ south florida . they’ve got subsidized studios for 3-6 month residency, a nice room open to curatorial proposals, and art classes. some of the art seemed a bit tempered to the clientele (the two front studios featured gummi bears and martinis), but no bother. check it.

sunday was vizcaya day. the estate, right on the water, south of the downtown, was built in the teens in the sytle of a certain italian renaissance four centuries prior. the place was lovely. we learned a lot about porcelain and saw the chairs where reagan and the pope had a nice convo. also, i enjoyed the (elder) calder featured on the sea barrier.