Not far from the new boxy high-rises elbowing their way into Sarasota’s skyline and nearby streets where hulking sugar-cube houses compete for square footage and a sterile brand of cool, the Pearsall House stands as a counter-argument.
At 1905 Alta Vista St. in Avondale, a cream stucco Mediterranean Revival house sits behind a brick walk, clipped landscaping and red-tile rooflines that still carry the silhouette of the 1920s. The house is known as the Pearsall House, after William and Bessie Pearsall, who bought the property in late 1925 during Sarasota’s land-boom years. It’s locally designated as historic and has long been attributed to Thomas Reed Martin, one of Sarasota’s most important boom-era architects, whose Mediterranean Revival work—including Burns Court—helped shape the city’s early architectural identity. The home is on the market for $3,975,000.
The Avondale neighborhood was replatted in 1924 with larger lots, wider streets and new infrastructure as it was repositioned as a more upscale suburban development West of the Trail. In that context, the Pearsall House is an expression of the architectural language that helped define Sarasota in the boom era. But the house isn’t stuck there. Hidden solar panels on the roof bring contemporary efficiency to a 1925 silhouette without altering what makes it recognizable.
The current owners, Kimberly and Bruce Peterson, didn’t come to the house casually. “We’re kind of like architecture junkies,” Kimberly says. Before moving here, they lived in Lido Shores, known for architecturally significant homes like this one. Bruce says they had long admired Mediterranean Revival houses. “We’ve always loved Spanish colonial revival houses,” he says. “We’d often admired them, but we’d never lived in one.”
The house had already passed through an earlier period of stewardship. We wrote about it in 2007, when then-owner Carolyn Van Helden described seeing through what were, at the time, “electric blue, pink and green painted interiors” and a detached garage in poor condition. “This is my baby,” she said when she first saw it. She bought the house in April 2005, took it through the city’s historic designation process, and hired architect W. Thorning Little and contractor Pat Ball for an expansion that nearly doubled the original 2,000-square-foot footprint while preserving historic elements. Van Helden recalled friends asking, “‘Are you sure, Carolyn? Do you know what you’re getting into?’” Her answer: “I have no regrets.” After 18 years, The Petersons bought the home from her in 2023 for $3.2 million.
That earlier renovation still shapes the house, adding a substantial wing to the east side. “The average person probably wouldn’t even notice where the old house ends and the new begins,” Bruce says.
It gave the house the kinds of rooms contemporary owners expect: a larger kitchen, a family room, a larger primary suite and better utility spaces. Bruce says those spaces are where the couple spends most of their time. Those are the rooms, he says, “built to be the way modern people want their homes to live.” The older living room and dining room remain in use, but he describes them as “more formal.”
The home’s strength is that it manages to carry both identities at once. Many old houses, Bruce says, are “significant and lovely, but they don’t live well.” This one, he says, does both.
The original portions of the house still read as carefully scaled and detailed, with hardwood floors, tall windows, plaster walls and ornamental molding. The painted brick fireplace remains a focal point. There is also an enclosed sunroom with terracotta-colored tile and rows of windows. Upstairs, exterior-access doors open to terrace spaces that extend the house into the garden and the light.
The kitchen was renovated in 2024, it now centers on a La Cornue range, Campbell Cabinetry and a plan that opens more comfortably to the exterior spaces. The old kitchen, Bruce says, “wasn’t really consistent either with the original design or with the way modern kitchen would be done.” Kimberly is blunter about the work they took on. “We totally redid the kitchen,” she says.
They also updated lighting and the powder room, where Kimberly—trained as both a gardener and floral designer in England—chose a floral wallpaper from England that turns a small room into one of the house’s most memorable spaces.
Outside, the grounds are wrapped in bougainvillea, podocarpus, palms and brick paths, with a courtyard and covered outdoor spaces that make entertaining feel central. Kimberly says dinners outside have become a real part of how they use the property.
The practical upgrades matter, too. The house has a commercial-grade generator, solar panels, a whole-house water filtration system and a new membrane roof. “Our bill is about the same as a small condo,” Bruce says.
The front door and windows are hurricane-rated, and the home suffered none of the flooding during the 2024 hurricane season that claimed many other older homes. And Kimberly pushes back on the assumption that age is a liability. “A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t want an old house,’” she says. “But this house is built like a fortress.”
Bruce says that the original portion was built of terracotta block with plaster interior and exterior walls. Even the ornamental moldings were made with horsehair in the plaster.
The historical record gives the house a more fragile beginning. William and Bessie Pearsall bought the property on Nov. 26, 1925, and lost it through foreclosure on April 12, 1928, a familiar story in the collapse that followed the Florida land boom and the ensuing Great Depression. Bessie Pearsall later transferred the home’s furnishings separately. A 1929 Sarasota Herald article described the foreclosure as “one of the most important real estate sales of the season.”
The Petersons are selling for less dramatic reasons. They describe it as a downsizing move and have bought a Sarasota condo designed by Tim Seibert, which Bruce describes as a return to the midcentury modern architecture they’ve always loved. Still, both he and Kimberly speak about this home like stewards…