The Boom, the Bust, and Ringling's Empty Bank Account

In the early nineteen twenties, Sarasota was at the center of the most frenzied real estate speculation in American history up to that point. The Florida land boom transformed a small fishing and farming town into a city of ambition seemingly overnight. Developers platted subdivisions faster than anyone could build on them. Buyers purchased lots by mail, sight unseen, often reselling them within weeks for twice the price. The Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, founded in nineteen twenty, promoted the city on themes of health, wealth, and subtropical happiness.

John and Charles Ringling were at the center of it. At the peak of the boom, the Ringling brothers owned more than a quarter of the land in and around Sarasota. John built the causeway connecting the mainland to Bird Key, Saint Armands Circle, and Lido Key. He laid out Saint Armands Circle as a planned luxury shopping and dining destination, planted palms, and began grading roads across the keys. He was building a city with his circus money, and for three years it looked like it was working.

Then, in nineteen twenty-six, prices collapsed. Credit tightened. Confidence evaporated. A hurricane swept across South Florida in September of that year and shattered whatever enthusiasm remained. By nineteen twenty-seven, the boom was over everywhere in Florida. John Ringling kept going for a while on the strength of the circus business, but the Great Depression finished what the bust had started.

When Ringling died in December of nineteen thirty-six, he had less than four hundred dollars in his bank account. The man who had owned a quarter of Sarasota, built a Venetian mansion, assembled one of the finest Baroque art collections in North America, and moved an entire circus to Florida died nearly broke. His estate went to the State of Florida, which spent the next several decades doing very little with it.