Seagate (Manatee County, Florida)

Seagate
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Seagate
Location	Sarasota, Manatee County, Florida[2]
Nearest city	Sarasota, Florida
Coordinates	27°23′29″N 82°33′52″W / 27.39139°N 82.56444°W / 27.39139; -82.56444
Area	45 acres (18 hectares)[2]
Built	1929[2]
Architect	George Albree Freeman Jr.[2]
Architectural style	Mediterranean Revival
NRHP reference No.	83001429[1]
Added to NRHP	January 21, 1983

Seagate, is located along Sarasota Bay in Manatee County, Florida, and was the former winter estate of Powel Crosley Jr., a noted Cincinnati, Ohio, industrialist and entrepreneur. Crosley had the 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m²), Mediterranean Revival-style home built in 1929 for his wife, Gwendolyn, on 45-acre (18-hectare) of land along Sarasota Bay that was platted in 1925 for a failed subdivision. New York architect George Albree Freeman Jr. designed the home; Ivo A. de Minicis, a Tampa, Florida, architect, drafted the plans; and Paul W. Bergmann, a Sarasota contractor, reportedly built the two-and-a-half-story, cast-stone-and-stucco home in 135 days.^{[citation needed]} Gwendolyn Crosley died at Seagate in 1939. After allowing the Army Air Corps to use the home for airmen who were training at a nearby airbase during World War II, Crosley sold the property in 1947.

Freeman Horton and his wife, Mabel, bought it the following year. Freeman Horton was a civil engineer who proposed the construction of the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge across Tampa Bay.^{[citation needed]} The Horton family lived on the estate from 1948 to 1977. The Campeau Corporation of America acquired the property in the early 1980s, intending to develop it into condominium units and use the residence serving as the development's clubhouse, but its plans failed. The Crosley home and 45 acres (18 hectares) of adjacent property were formally added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 1983.

Friends of Seagate Inc., a local, nonprofit preservation group led efforts to preserve the historic property and its remaining undeveloped land in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Manatee County, Florida, government purchased the home and 16.5 acres (6.7 hectares) of the property in 1991 for $1.6 million; the State of Florida purchased the estate's remaining 28.4 acres (11.5 hectares) for $2 million for future expansion of the University of South Florida.

The present-day Crosley home and 16.5 acres (6.7 hectares) of land are operated as an event rental property. The university's 28.4-acre (11.5-hectare) tract of land that was part of the former Seagate estate, included in the national register nomination, is the present-day site of the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus.