FLORIDA BUILDINGS I LOVE: No. 72: Cocoon House, 1950, Siesta Key
3575 Bayou Louise Lane. Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph, architects
Harold Bubil
Many an architect’s first house was for his or her mother.
In Sarasota in the late 1940s, the new architectural partnership of Ralph Twitchell and Paul Rudolph was getting a lot of attention for their progressive, experimental house designs that took International School modernism and adapted it for Sarasota’s flat, waterfront landscape and subtropical climate.
Some locals found their rectangular, flat-roofed, trim-free structures to be shocking. So to get work and advance their art and craft, they did projects for Twitchell’s secretary, Lu Andrews, as well as his new in-laws, the Healys of Siesta Key.
The home was built in the 1950s, designed by noted Sarasota School of Architecture founders Ralph Twitchell and Jack West, and had been marketed as either an existing structure in need of renovations or a potential beachfront teardown.
Listing agent Martie Lieberman of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty, founder of the Sarasota Architectural Foundation, specializes in selling Sarasota School of Architecture style homes through modernsarasota.com.
Lieberman noted that the home was being listed for sale at land value with a hope that the buyer would ultimately renovate the home.
The original asking price was $1.895 million.
The taxable value of the 1.86-acre parcel was $1.782 million in 2020, according to the Sarasota County Property Appraiser’s website.