RESTORING A GEM

June 9, 2002

Section: SUNDAY REAL ESTATE - Sarasota Herald-Tribune (FL) Page: I1

DOROTHY STOCKBRIDGE-PRATT dorothy.pratt@heraldtribune.com

John Barron was driving around Siesta Isles when he spotted the low profile of a modernist house at 5211 Cape Leyte Drive.

"I recognized something I'd grown up with in 1950s St. Petersburg, with the block walls inside," said Barron, who called his wife, Jamie, at a family reunion in North Dakota. Even if she didn't like the house, he knew she'd love the pie-shaped location looking down the Grand Canal. When she saw it, she recognized "good bones" in the house, but didn't want to start a renovation until she knew how the house had looked originally.

Their search led them to Gloria Thyne, whose late husband, Frank, had built the house in 1960 for her parents, Mr. and Mrs. A.F. Dickerson. Thyne knew that architect Tim Seibert had designed the house in 1958 during the heyday of the Sarasota School of Architecture. The Barrons' architect, friend Joe King, got Seibert's original plans from Sam Holladay, who now heads Seibert Architects.

Those plans showed how previous renovations had destroyed Seibert's plan of space flowing seamlessly from indoors to outdoors, bringing nature inside. During the seven-month renovation, the Barrons gave up a 16-by-24-foot air-conditioned area by restoring a sliding glass wall to its original position. They also removed a third bedroom that spoiled the original lines of the house.

"I guess it was unusual going for the bedroom demolition permit without replacing it or adding space," John Barron said. "Someone had tried to make the house into something it wasn't by putting stucco and rough sawn cedar outside."

Now, the house has 1,600 square feet of air conditioned space. The Barrons prefer keeping the house open to the breezes, which gives them the extra space of the enclosed entry courtyard and lanais on the other three sides of the house.

"From any part of the house, we have open views of the outside and the feel of being both inside and outside at the same time," said Jamie Barron, who felt strongly about preserving this architecture.

Sarasota County's historic preservation board has approved historic designation for the house. If the County Commission concurs, future changes must be sensitive to the design and approved by the board. Such designation will not protect the house from demolition some day but John Barron says, "we hope to keep the house for a good long time."

Jamie Barron supervised the renovation, which was completed in April. She stayed with her parents, Mike and Sharon Holsinger, a half-mile away and was at the job site early each day.

The Barrons reconstructed all the removed sections of roof overhang and the rear and side screened enclosures. They replaced the three interior sliders to re-create the living room separate from the open covered area between the kitchen and guest bedroom.

A new roof has rigid insulation under two layers of rubberized roofing material. New windows and sliders replaced old plate glass and doors are new solid core stained wood.

They had terrazzo floors ground and sealed, and restored mahogany louvers that had been imported from Havana and a teak wall unit. Beams that had been boxed in were slender again. The kitchen was rebuilt with granite tops and clean-line cabinets.

Reveals around the ceiling make the ceilings feel like they're floating. They moved one of the bathrooms to make room for a walk-through closet between the two bedrooms. Baths still are true to their period with one-inch glass tiles. Plumbing, kitchen and bathroom wiring and a four-ton heat pump are new.

Exterior stucco on the stacked block walls had to be removed by hand. Landscaper JoJo Lindquist is designing a no-grass, drought-tolerant landscape to go with the shell driveway.

The Barrons are proudest that architect Seibert likes what they have done. He came up from his Boca Grande home to see the house before the restoration work and a couple of times afterwards. Seibert may enter the house for a "Test of Time" award from the American Institute of Architecture. He has won that award twice before. He praised the skill of builder Frank Thyne, whom he worked with on many projects, including the John D. MacDonald house and the Field Club.

Seibert said that he and other followers of Paul Rudolph and the Sarasota School in the late-1950s felt "a mandate to design for a better world. Space flows seamlessly from indoors to outdoors. The courtyard gardens segue effortlessly to the outside and show nature inside."

This is done with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall glass and the use of the same materials, stack-bond block and wood ceilings, inside and out. This visual extension is combined with forthright use of materials. The concrete block is not covered up.

"Geometry is kept simple; no tricks are allowed, no decoration," Seibert said. "The slender steel columns become part of the window wall, and the steel tube takes the place of the beam.

"Furniture design was spare and elegant. Landscaping was an integral part of the house design, and the house relied on its relationship to the outdoors to live as a work of art," Seibert added.

He said the Modernist movement and its offspring, the Sarasota School, waned in the early 1970s when new philosophies began to abound.

"Perhaps the discipline of a pure architecture was too much for the untalented to handle," said Seibert, who decries today's pseudo Mediterranean McMansions in Sarasota.

Jamie and John Barron's Siesta Key home, designed in 1958 by Sarasota School architect Tim Seibert, has many open spaces. The living room is walled with glass and vertical shutters that are protected by a wall outside, with an open roof to allow air to circulate.

Homeowner John Barron, right, looks over site drawings with architect Tim Seibert in a bedroom that has its own patio and small garden.

The narrow kitchen was rebuilt with granite tops and clean-line cabinets. It opens up to the outdoors.

In John and Jamie Barron's home, custom teak cabinetry separates the kitchen and the dining room.

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