You can’t see the house for sale at 2229 McClellan Parkway in Sarasota because a high Jeffersonian serpentine brick wall hides it from view and provides extra privacy for the homeowners while mitigating traffic noises. When it was added to the property in the 1960s, residential walls in the city of Sarasota were not allowed and the handsome structure was permitted as a “sound attenuation device.” It does what it was engineered to do and is quite handsome.
You have to turn down a side street to glimpse a large white rambling two-story wood-frame home that shows its character in multiple styles of architecture including Dutch Colonial and farmhouse vernacular.
Additionally, there’s a whimsical coastal reference that’s realized in a three-story lighthouse designed by acclaimed modernist architect Tim Seibert (1928-2018) that was added to the property in 1977 as a private and quiet bedroom suite for the homeowners Dr. Thomas and Scarlet Dickinson. You can glimpse Sarasota Bay through the trees from the the circular balcony at the top of the lighthouse. Tim Seibert was one of the founders of the movement that came to be known as the Sarasota School of Architecture, and homeowner Dr. Thomas Dickinson, was the area’s leading (and for a time only) ophthalmologist. The Dickinsons bought the house in 1954. Today it’s easily three times as large as it was in 1930 when it was built.
The five-bedroom home with a four car garage and a swimming pool has come onto the market for $2,350,000 through Nora Johnson of Michael Saunders & Company.