SARASOTA

Sarasota bayfront designs evoke Van Wezel memories

Jeff LaHurd
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Mayor David Cohen and City Manager Ken Thompson were instrumental in the birth of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall. [PHOTO COURTESY OF SARASOTA COUNTY HISTORICAL RESOURCES]

After the blows of the real estate crash, the Great Depression and World War II, Sarasota emerged as a city on the move.

New roads were constructed, U.S. 41 was rerouted along the bayfront and Arvida Realty arrived with grand plans for the keys. At the same time, Sarasota’s cadre of renowned, modernist architects, collectively known as the Sarasota School, changed the look of the county. Add to the mix a new city manager, Ken Thompson, who would guide the city’s fortunes for 38 years.

The exciting climax of this new era was the construction of the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall — a lavender symbol of contemporary Sarasota, and a testament to the community’s progress to that time. It was a top priority for Thompson.

Ground was broken for the now-iconic hall on April 25, 1968, and a photo appeared in the Herald-Tribune showing City Commissioner David Cohen, Mayor Jack Betz and Thompson, as well as Adolph “Chick” Frankel, chairman of the auditorium advisory committee, and Paul Stannard, who had helped obtain a $430,000 grant from the Van Wezel Foundation. Each pushed a shovel into the turf.

Betz credited Cohen “as the man who conceived the building.” He went on, “This is a great day for Sarasota and citizens of the county and other surrounding areas. This building exemplifies the character of the citizens and of the community perhaps more than any other structure.”

Cohen, a child prodigy violinist, was co-founder of the Florida West Coast Symphony and in its early years its business manager, president and concertmaster. To him, the need for a new venue was acute.

When Cohen died in 1999, Dr. Curtis Haug, the hall’s managing director said, “It will always be a monument to his total commitment to all areas of Sarasota’s cultural life.”

Indeed, it was a giant step forward for Sarasota. Previously, live entertainment was served up in the Mira Mar Auditorium, a Mediterranean Revival hall on McAnsh Square that had been built in 1924, its opening called “The Event of the Season.”

It was not a venue to entice top-flight talent. Jazz dance bands passing through town played there, as did soprano Josephine Lucchese, an understudy to Helen Morgan. Noted opera baritone Robert Ringling, son of Charles Ringling, put on a concert, as did Frieda Hempel, “The Jenny Lind of Today.” Lowell Thomas lectured to a full house, “With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia.”

It was also used for numerous community events, from dances to flower shows to fashion shows. But by 1955, its best years were behind it, and it was demolished.

The other major entertainment site, the cavernous Works Progress Administration funded Municipal Auditorium, was built without regard to acoustics and stood as an unrefined workhorse of a building that was opened in time for the colorful Sara de Sota Pageant on Feb. 24, 1938. Today, it hosts a multitude of civic functions: proms, dances, beauty pageants, home shows, flea markets, antique bazaars, flower shows and various performances.

Neither could draw the high caliber of entertainment being sought by modern Sarasota. But the Lewis and Eugenia Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall would bring us world-class productions and talent.

Progress on the construction of the unusual, but beautiful, building on Sarasota Bay was closely followed, scoffed at by some as the “Purple People Seater” or “Purple Cow.”

Designed by the renowned William Wesley Peters, a Frank Lloyd Wright protégé, the color scheme, floor coverings and fabrics were selected by Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright. The project director, Vernon D. Swaback, predicted that over time, “people will understand it, and with more exposure, be as enthusiastic as we are.” He assured “the purple color may have a harsh appearance now, but it will fade to smoother lavender with a little time.”

After the controversial color was chosen, Swaback sent a letter to William C. Coleman, chairman of the Van Wezel Hall’s operating committee: “In summary, we can only ask for a reasonable amount of faith in our professional judgment and the record it has produced.”

The hall was said to cost $2.475 million, and Peters, discussing the building some years later with Herald-Tribune writer Charlie Huisking, said, “The design was suggested by a serrated, lavender colored seashell that had come into my possession."

The hall “was designed to reflect its waterfront location and the entire West Coast of Florida environment.”

He told Huisking, “I had shown the shell to Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright, and she said, ‘Why not paint it the same color as the shell?’”

Thompson had remarked of the local controversy engendered by the Van Wezel: “If a building doesn’t provoke some kind of discussion, then it probably isn’t a successful piece of architecture.”

St. Petersburg Times Art and Architecture writer Charles Benbow assured doubters that Sarasota could be proud of it. As it was designed by “one of the world’s most famous architectural groups,” that fact alone “will guarantee wide recognition for the hall ... and draw sightseers off highway U.S. 41 for many years.”

At its completion, County Commissioner William Carey congratulated the city on its achievement.

“It’s magnificent, really magnificent,” he said. “It’s the most outstanding civic accomplishment to date. It will do much to improve and stabilize the cultural image of Sarasota.”

Its opening on Jan. 5, 1970, was a suitably grand affair, and it was given high marks by attendees on hand to watch a performance of The Fiddler on the Roof.

All agreed that Sarasota, the cultural capital of the Gulf Coast, finally had a first-class venue to book top-drawer productions and artists. This was a symbol of modern Sarasota — beautiful, refined and cultured.

On opening night, Mayor D. Williams Overton addressed the audience for a few minutes before the curtain went up. “I know all of you will join me in saluting the latest gem in the Bayfront Tiara of the city of Sarasota. We all must surely admit that our new gem is an amethyst.”

He read a congratulatory telegram from Gov. Claude R. Kirk: “It is another outstanding example of why Florida living is the very finest.”

Audience reaction that opening night was encouraging. Dick Bloom of the Sarasota Herald wrote: “Comments made by first-nighters as they entered the richly endowed grand foyer of the theatre included the repeated use of such equally splendorous adjectives as ‘magnificent,’ ‘tremendous,’ ‘awesome,’ and more to exhaust the most complete of dictionaries.”

For effect, William Wesley Peters arrived dressed in a purple tuxedo.

No one had followed the progress of the construction more closely than Thompson. When Peters was in town, he often stayed at the Thompson residence, and when the floor to the hall stage was put in, Vernon Swaback, one of the architects, and Ken and Barbara Thompson went over to have a celebratory glass of champagne, with Thompson doing a juggling act, kidding that he was the first to perform at the hall.

Today, this iconic building that at one time meant so much to Sarasotans and her visitors, has become an issue as the city debates what to do with its bayfront.

Sarasota’s history is littered with seminal landmarks whose importance to the history of our city have been reduced to rubble.

Jeff LaHurd is a Sarasota resident, historian and author. E-mail: Jlahurd60@yahoo.com