El Vernona Apartments-Broadway Apartments, Mediterranean Revival apartments in Sarasota, Florida.
El Vernona Apartments-Broadway Apartments is a three-story, L-shaped Mediterranean Revival building at 1133 Fourth Street, built of reinforced concrete and hollow tile with stucco walls and cast stone trim. It holds twenty furnished apartments in fifty-five rooms, and its most intact Baum-designed fabric survives in Sarasota.
Owen Burns commissioned architect Dwight James Baum to design the apartments as the northern gateway of his Broadway Development, which also included the El Vernona Hotel and the Burns Realty complex. The permit was issued in October 1925, and builder Ricketts and Haworth opened the $250,000 complex for occupancy in March 1926. It joined the National Register of Historic Places on March 22, 1984.
The building's name honours Vernona Hill Freeman Burns, wife of developer Owen Burns, and it is still commonly called Belle Haven. Owen Burns commissioned architect Dwight James Baum to design the hotel, offices and apartments of his Broadway Development in a single Mediterranean Revival style, giving the group a unified look.
The building stands at 1133 Fourth Street, at the northern end of the Broadway Development overlooking Sarasota Bay. It is a private apartment building, so visitors see it from the street; the stucco and cast stone facades are best read from the sidewalk.
The building is the most architecturally intact of Dwight James Baum's Sarasota works, and its name honors Vernona Hill Freeman Burns, wife of developer Owen Burns. Baum, a Syracuse graduate of 1909, also designed Ca' d'Zan for John Ringling and the Sarasota County Courthouse.
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