Ca D’Zan: The Ringling Mansion and the Pride of Sarasota, FL

The King of the Circus, John Ringling and his wife, Mable built this Italian Renaissance style mansion between 1924-1926 overlooking the Sarasota Bay. The following year, John Ringling moved the winter quarters of his Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Sarasota. Open to the public, it rapidly became the most visited tourist attraction in Florida.

The couple’s thirty-room mansion is modeled on the Doge’s Palace in Venice, Italy. Ca D’Zan, means “House of John” in a Venetian dialect. Mable, his wife, had spent years traveling European cities with a Brownie camera, recording ideas for their home. During their travels, the couple had acquired immense collections of furnishings and art, including the largest group of paintings by Peter Paul Rubens in the world.

The Tower, centered over the house’s main fascade, was lighted whenever the Ringlings were in residence at Ca D’Zan. From the thirty-one foot tower, one could survey the vast extent of the property and the beautiful Sarasota Bay. John Ringling’s Yacht, the “Zalophus” was moored at a dock in the bay. Mable’s gondola was docked opposite the terrace, on a small island that was washed away by a hurricane in 1926.

Some of the fine details on the Towers tiles created by the O. W. Ketcham Terra Cotta Works include bats, cats, owls, flowers, marine life and Zodiac symbols.

In the magnificent court at Ca D’Zan, every surface and furnishing is luxurious. Cypress beams support the thirty-two foot high ceiling and were painted by Robert Webb Jr., an apprentice to John Singer Sargent. Seventeenth century tapestries hang from the upper gallery, and an 1875 French tapestry rug covers marble tile floors. Reproduction Louis XV gilt furniture establishes the formal style that the Ringling’s wished to achieve for these mansion. Purchased from the major auction houses and salesrooms in New York, these pieces filled their home with the stylish splendor of the Gilded Age of the 1880s and1890s.

This was the time when many of the great mansions on Fifth Avenue were being torn down and replace by commercial and institutional buildings. John Ringling purchased many of the paintings that were in the great Astor ballroom-picture gallery. At the Astor sale, Ringling also acquired the massive bronze doors from the Fifth Avenues entrance of the Astor Mansion, now in the entrance lobby of The Ringling Art Museum, and the complete fittings of several rooms, two of which are reinstalled in the Art Museum.

You would think a building as magnificent as Ca D’Zan would stand atop any priority list for preservation. It did not. As decades of moist, salty winds off the Sarasota bay eroded the structure, under-funding led to year upon year of deferred maintenance. The house was in serious disrepair, and by the mid 1990s, the threat of losing the house forever forced the state of Florida and private donors to redress the buildings ailing health. Ca D’Zan was brought back to its former glory and is now the mast visited tourist attraction in Florida.