Sarasota’s preservation community is feeling the pressure. With no ironclad protections in place, the Gulf Coast Florida city—which, thanks largely to Paul Rudolph, who maintained a presence there from 1941 until 1962, became an epicenter of architectural ingenuity—is in a race to save what’s left of its repository of significant mid-20th century homes, schools, and churches.
Among the fallen: Rudolph’s elegant, skeletal steel Riverview High School, designed in 1958 and demolished, after an epic two-year struggle on the part of preservation advocates, in 2009. “It was devastating,” says Sarasota architect Carl Abbott, who is on the advisory board of the Sarasota Architectural Foundation (SAF), a nonprofit group with a mission to encourage preservation and adaptive re-use, and to educate people about the worthy architecture in their midst. At 78, Abbott is the youngest original member of what’s become known as the Sarasota School of Architecture, a body of work unique in the nation, informed by Bauhaus and International Style principles and smartly adapted to the subtropical Florida climate.
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