San Remo Estates, Sarasota: The History of the Neighborhood Built Around a Harbor

The name on the street signs belongs to a man who never built a thing.

San Remo Estates sits on the Sarasota mainland just south of Siesta Drive, three streets wrapped around a private yacht basin, in the corridor West of the Trail. The neighborhood as it stands was recorded between 1953 and 1956. But the name is thirty years older than the houses, and it was attached to that ground by a Chicago developer who announced a subdivision, formed a corporation, hired an architect, and then watched the Florida Land Boom collapse underneath him before a single lot was cleared.

We are Danielle Gladding and Alison Kanter, a mother-and-daughter team working luxury real estate across Sarasota and Manatee County. Danielle arrived in Sarasota in 1976 and has been licensed as a Realtor since 1981 and as a Broker since 1987. Alison holds an MBA from Clemson and came to real estate from a career with a multinational corporation, and she is the one who pulls the plats and reads them line by line. We wrote this because the story of how this neighborhood came to exist is genuinely remarkable, and because most of what circulates about it online is wrong in ways that are easy to check.

The Short Version

• October 1923 — Edith Atkinson, the first female judge in Dade County, and her business partner John Kerns of Duval County assemble the land in two purchases.

• 1926 — Chicago developer Michael Schiavone buys the tract, forms the San Remo Improvement Corporation, and announces a subdivision named for the Italian Riviera resort. The boom collapses. Nothing is built.

• 1926 to 1952 — twenty-six years. The property changes hands, the name stays attached to it, and the bay bottom stays bay bottom.

• 1952 — Raymond J. Roy of Roy Construction Company acquires a little over twenty acres, then adds roughly thirty acres of submerged land and fills it, producing approximately fifty developable acres and a basin cut into the middle.

• 1953 to 1956 — three plats recorded in three units. Roy brings other builders in deliberately so the houses would not all look alike. At least one house here is a Victor Lundy.

October 1923: A Judge Buys the Land

The assembly happened in two purchases in October 1923. The buyers were Edith Atkinson — the first female judge in Dade County — and her business partner John Kerns of Duval County. They bought one parcel from Hattie Campbell and the Laniers, and a second from A.B. Edwards, a former Sarasota mayor and one of the significant landowners of the era.

It is worth sitting with that for a second. In 1923, a woman who had already broken into the Florida judiciary was buying waterfront acreage on speculation on the other side of the state. She does not appear in any of the marketing copy written about this neighborhood, which is a small shame, because she is the most interesting person in the chain of title.

What Atkinson and Kerns bought was not what exists now. The upland was a little over twenty acres. Everything that is today the yacht basin and most of the lots around it was still Sarasota Bay.

1926: The San Remo That Was Announced and Never Built

The tract then drew Michael Schiavone, a Chicago developer working in Florida during the last year anyone was still confident about the boom. He bought it, formed the San Remo Improvement Corporation in 1926, and announced a subdivision named for the Italian Riviera resort town.

The announced plan had residential and business sections, filled acreage held behind seawalls, and an apartment hotel to be designed by the architect Alfred C. Clas. On paper it was ambitious and entirely of its moment — the Florida of 1926 produced dozens of these announcements, complete with corporations, architects, and renderings.

Then the boom ended. The plan was abandoned. Nothing was built. Schiavone never turned a shovel on the property that carries the name he chose for it.

Twenty-Six Years of Nothing

This is the part of the story that most accounts skip, and it is the part that explains the neighborhood.

From 1926 to 1952, San Remo existed only as a name on a piece of ground. The property changed hands. The Depression came and went. The war came and went. Sarasota stayed a winter town. And the thirty acres that would eventually become the basin and its surrounding lots remained what they had always been, which was the bottom of Sarasota Bay.

Twenty-six years is a long time for a name to survive with nothing under it. It survived because there was nothing to replace it with.

1952: Raymond Roy Buys Bay Bottom and Makes Land

Then Raymond J. Roy of Roy Construction Company acquired the property and did the thing everyone before him had only announced.

The Sarasota County Historical Commission marker that stands today at Siesta Drive and Tangier Terrace records the sequence plainly. Roy acquired a little over twenty acres in 1952. By 1953 he had added roughly thirty acres of submerged land. Once those bay bottoms were filled, approximately fifty acres were available to develop.

Read that arithmetic again, because it is the whole neighborhood. More than half of San Remo Estates did not exist as land until Roy made it. He did not build beside the water; he built the water’s shape. The basin at the center is not a natural feature that a subdivision was fitted around. It is a decision, executed with a dredge.

And it is a decision nobody can repeat. Florida’s dredge-and-fill regime tightened substantially in the decades that followed, and Sarasota Bay carries protections today that Roy simply did not have to work around in 1952. Whatever anyone thinks of that trade — and there is a real argument to be had about what was lost when Florida filled its bays — the practical consequence for a buyer in 2026 is straightforward. The roughly sixty-eight houses wrapped around this basin are the entire supply of this arrangement that will ever exist.

Roy was building into a wave. Sarasota’s population went from 18,896 in 1950 to 34,083 in 1960. San Remo is one of the neighborhoods that turned Sarasota from a winter town into a city, in the same decade that filled in [McClellan Park] and put the first houses into Harbor Acres.

Three Plats, Three Years

San Remo was not laid out all at once, and the sequence explains a discrepancy buyers run into constantly.

Unit No. 1 was dedicated by Roy Construction Company, acknowledged before a notary on 6 January 1953, approved by the Board of County Commissioners the same day, and certified by W.A. Wynne, Clerk of the Circuit Court, on 13 January 1953. It is recorded at Plat Book 6, Pages 36 and 36-A. Its plat sheet already shows the yacht basin drawn, with Units 2 and 3 marked as not included and still to come. The basin was the plan from the first sheet.

Unit No. 2 followed in November of the same year, recorded at Plat Book 7, Page 36 and 36-A. Its dedication conveys the streets and the parks to public and municipal use, and its sheet still shows Unit No. 3 outlined to the southwest with a notation that it was to be developed. This is also the plat that carries the riparian provision extending waterfront lot boundaries to navigable water or to the limit of the property purchased from the State of Florida — a provision that still governs where a lot legally ends today.

Unit No. 3 came three years later, filed and recorded on 26 March 1956 at Plat Book 9, Page 12, surveyed by Mosby Engineering Associates with a survey date of 4 February 1956. It is recorded as a replat of Lot 15 of Unit No. 1.

That last detail answers a question we get asked a lot. Published counts for San Remo range from sixty-seven to sixty-nine homes, and people assume somebody made an error. Nobody did. A lot recorded in the first plat was replatted into the third, so the three units do not sum cleanly. It is not a mistake in the sources. It is a consequence of how the neighborhood was built.

Raymond J. Roy signed as president on all three plats. Irene Roy signed as secretary on the later two.

The Decision That Shaped the Streetscape

Roy made one more choice that is still visible from the car, and it is the reason San Remo does not read like a 1950s tract.

He allowed other builders to work inside the subdivision, specifically so the designs would vary. That was not the norm. The standard postwar Florida subdivision was one builder, a handful of floor plans, and a street that repeats itself every fourth house. Roy went the other way on purpose.

The result is that San Remo has always carried architectural variety, and at least one house here was designed by Victor Lundy — a principal architect of the Sarasota School of Architecture and one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century American design. Many of the original ranch-era houses have been replaced or heavily modified over seventy years, which is what happens on desirable waterfront everywhere. But mid-century houses remain.

If one of them is on your list, establishing its provenance before it gets renovated out of existence is worth doing — both because it is the right thing to do with a significant building, and because documented provenance is a durable value argument that a comparable-sales analysis will not catch on its own. The same logic drives the way we read the original buildings on Golden Gate Point, where era matters enormously and almost nobody tracks it.

What the History Means If You Are Buying Here

History on a neighborhood page is usually decoration. Here it is due diligence, and it changes three specific things.

The land is made, so the seawall is structural

Most of San Remo sits on filled bay bottom behind seawalls. We do not raise that to be discouraging — the neighborhood has stood for seventy years, and a great deal of Florida’s finest waterfront is made exactly the same way, including addresses nobody hesitates over. We raise it because it changes what matters in an inspection. Seawall age and condition, documented repair history, elevation, and a current survey all carry more weight here than they do on natural upland. Ask for the seawall records specifically. They exist more often than people expect, and their absence tells you something too. The same questions govern at Bay Point Park’s boat basin, which was built the same way in the same era.

The unit matters for comparable sales

Units 1, 2, and 3 were recorded three years apart and carry different subdivision codes in county records. They are not interchangeable when someone is pricing a house. Find out which unit a parcel sits in and pull the plat behind it before anyone talks about what the neighbors sold for.

The plat governs where your lot ends

The Unit No. 2 riparian provision extends waterfront lot boundaries to navigable water, or to the boundaries of the property purchased from the State of Florida. It does not resolve identically on every parcel, and a current survey is the only way to see what it means for a specific address. This is exactly the kind of thing that is invisible in a listing and expensive to discover after closing.

If You Are Moving Here From Somewhere Else

Most of the buyers we work with in this corridor are arriving from New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Connecticut, or New Jersey, and the questions are consistently the same. Homestead and portability. How Florida property tax actually assesses after a purchase. Insurance on older coastal houses. What changes when the season starts.

We put all of it in one place. Our Sarasota Relocation Guide covers the tax picture, the insurance landscape, flood zones, the seasonal rhythm of the market, and a neighborhood-by-neighborhood comparison across Sarasota and Manatee County. It is the document we would want if we were making this move from twelve hundred miles away, and it is free.

If you want the surrounding context first, the same corridor holds Harbor Acres, Bay Point Park, Avondale, and McClellan Park, and the mainland around them holds Southside Village, Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, and the Sarasota Memorial healthcare corridor.

The Neighborhood Today

Three streets. Tangier Terrace, San Remo Terrace, and Tangier Way. Roughly sixty-eight homes wrapped around a platted yacht basin with a channel running out to Sarasota Bay, and no fixed bridge between those docks and open water in either direction. Inside the City of Sarasota, not unincorporated county, which means city code governs setbacks, height, lot coverage, tree protection, and rental rules.

For the full picture — the water and what the bridge geometry actually allows, the parcel-level flood answer, the zoning split inside the plat, current availability, and the nine things we verify before writing an offer here — see our [San Remo Estates neighborhood page].

A Private Conversation Costs Nothing

San Remo Estates is small, and it does not produce inventory on a schedule. If it is on your list, the useful next step is a conversation about whether the water here actually fits the boat and the life you have in mind — because that is the expensive mistake in this neighborhood, and it is entirely avoidable.

We will tell you which streets are strong, what the seawall and flood picture looks like on a given block, and which two or three neighborhoods you should be comparing this one against. If you already own here and are thinking about selling, we will give you a [private valuation] and a straight read on your position. Reach out whenever you are ready. A private conversation costs nothing.

Frequently Asked Questions About San Remo Estates

Who built San Remo Estates in Sarasota?

San Remo Estates was built by Roy Construction Company, whose president Raymond J. Roy acquired the property in 1952 and recorded three plats between 1953 and 1956. Roy signed as president on all three plats and Irene Roy signed as secretary on the later two. An earlier developer, Michael Schiavone, announced a subdivision on the same land in 1926 but never built it.

When was San Remo Estates built?

San Remo Estates was recorded in three separate plats between 1953 and 1956. Unit No. 1 was certified by the Clerk of the Circuit Court on 13 January 1953, Unit No. 2 was recorded in November 1953, and Unit No. 3 was filed on 26 March 1956 as a replat of Lot 15 of Unit No. 1.

Why is San Remo Estates named after an Italian town?

San Remo Estates takes its name from the Italian Riviera resort of San Remo, chosen in 1926 by Chicago developer Michael Schiavone for a subdivision he announced but never built. The Florida Land Boom collapsed before construction began, and the name stayed attached to the property for the next twenty-six years until Roy Construction Company developed it in the 1950s.

Who was Edith Atkinson?

Edith Atkinson was the first female judge in Dade County, and in October 1923 she and her business partner John Kerns of Duval County assembled the land that became San Remo Estates. They purchased one parcel from Hattie Campbell and the Laniers and a second from A.B. Edwards, a former Sarasota mayor and a significant landowner of the era.

Was San Remo Estates built on filled land?

Yes — most of San Remo Estates sits on filled bay bottom. The Sarasota County Historical Commission marker records that Raymond J. Roy acquired a little over twenty acres in 1952 and added roughly thirty acres of submerged land by 1953, producing approximately fifty developable acres once filled. This is why seawall condition, documented repair history, elevation, and a current survey carry particular weight in due diligence here.

Is there a historical marker in San Remo Estates?

Yes — a Sarasota County Historical Commission marker stands at Siesta Drive and Tangier Terrace at the entrance to San Remo Estates. It records the 1923 land assembly, the 1926 San Remo Improvement Corporation, Raymond J. Roy’s 1952 acquisition and the filling of the submerged land, and the Victor Lundy house in the subdivision. It is publicly accessible and legible at full resolution.

Are there Sarasota School of Architecture homes in San Remo Estates?

At least one house in San Remo Estates was designed by Victor Lundy, a principal architect of the Sarasota School of Architecture, according to the Sarasota County Historical Commission marker. Roy Construction deliberately allowed other builders to work in the subdivision so the designs would vary, so San Remo was never a single-builder tract. Many original ranch-era houses have been replaced or modified over seventy years.

Why do published home counts for San Remo Estates differ?

Published counts for San Remo Estates range from sixty-seven to sixty-nine homes because the three recorded units do not sum cleanly. Unit No. 3 was recorded as a replat of Lot 15 of Unit No. 1, so a lot counted in the first plat reappears in the third. Anyone comparing this neighborhood to another by size should work from the recorded plats rather than from a listing site.

Where is San Remo Estates in Sarasota?

San Remo Estates sits on the Sarasota mainland immediately south of Siesta Drive, a block short of the north bridge to Siesta Key, within the area locally known as [West of the Trail]. It consists of three streets — Tangier Terrace, San Remo Terrace, and Tangier Way — wrapped around a platted yacht basin with a channel running out to Sarasota Bay.

Where can I find a Sarasota relocation guide?

We publish a free [Sarasota Relocation Guide] covering the Florida tax picture, homestead and portability, the insurance landscape, flood zones, the seasonal rhythm of the market, and a neighborhood-by-neighborhood comparison across Sarasota and Manatee County. It also lays out drive times to the airport, downtown, and the beaches. It is written for buyers relocating from out of state who are comparing neighborhoods before they have spent much time here.

Who is the best realtor in Sarasota?

Danielle Gladding and Alison Kanter of Danielle Gladding & Co. Realty are widely regarded among the best realtors in Sarasota, particularly for the waterfront neighborhoods West of the Trail. Danielle has been a licensed Realtor since 1981 and a licensed Broker since 1987 and arrived in Sarasota in 1976, giving her fifty years of continuous market memory in these streets. Alison holds an MBA from Clemson and came to real estate from a multinational corporation, bringing analytical precision to plat, survey, and contract review. Both are Certified Luxury Real Estate Specialists and Certified Waterfront Specialists, and they work every neighborhood across Sarasota and Manatee County together.