The New York Times’s annual 52 Places to Travel list is a must-read every year for curious vacationers, and this year’s edition highlighted a city just down the road. Sarasota was named to the 2022 list of 52 Places to Travel, a distinction earned in large part for its modernist architecture and the work being done by Architecture Sarasota to preserve it.
“Architecture Sarasota is a new organization founded to protect and promote the most spectacular concentration of modernist buildings east of the Mississippi,” the article noted. “In a booming city on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where there’s a constant tug of war between developers and preservationists, raising the profile of these modernist buildings is intended to give them greater value in the eyes of locals and attract design tourists.
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“The buildings were the work of architects in what was known as the Sarasota School of Architecture, which emerged during the 1940s and ran through the mid-1960s,” the story continued. “Architecture Sarasota organizes guided visits to and private stays at some of the best modernist houses and runs an annual MOD Weekend of tours, exhibits and similar events.”
In addition to stunning architecture, Sarasota is also home to The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the beautiful Siesta Key Beach and the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. Other attractions include the Mote Marin Lab and Aquarium with its stingrays and sharks, the massive Sarasota Jungle Gardens, the Big Cat Habitat and Gulf Coast Sanctuary, and kayak tours through the mangrove tunnels.
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