Tiny treasure

In a town full of McMansions, it’s exciting to come across the exact opposite — a 680-square-foot bungalow, 75 years old, that manages to upstage the overwrought newcomers with its charm, history, and sure sense of style. Susan McLeod’s Southside Village home is just such a place: The scale may be small, but the details are beautiful and so beautifully thought out that the home becomes a lesson in one-person living. (Sorry — make that one person and a dog, the dog being a very spoiled golden retriever named Samantha.)

McLeod, a longtime Realtor with Michael Saunders & Co., bought the house in 1998. 

“I didn’t know what I was looking for,” she recalls. “But the location was perfect.” 

And at first glance the cottage wasn’t very promising. It was painted brown and suffered from years of neglect. But the front door opened to a surprising wow factor: a two-story living room, completely paneled in pecky cypress, with a single, rough-hewed beam and a massive stone fireplace. It also contained the home’s sole closet, so shallow that today it serves as a bookcase.

It turned out that the house’s impracticality had an “only in Sarasota” explanation: It is one of a cluster of “circus bungalows” that dot the neighborhood around the original Wallenda home on Arlington Street. Circus families built the homes as winter retreats during the brief months when they weren’t on the road. The circus people were used to living in tight spaces, and even today the cottage has the feeling of an old-fashioned circus wagon, handcrafted in wood, where everything is built in and every inch of space is used to its fullest potential.

Aside from a few tweaks to the floor plan and a sophisticated, almost Parisian gloss in the decorating, the interior is largely as McLeod found it. Off the living room is a small den that opens into a bath. The kitchen is also on the small side, but careful planning gives it the efficiency of a ship’s galley. The counters are black slate, adding a dramatic touch. 

“As a Realtor, I’ve seen all the granite counter tops I ever want to see,” McLeod says. 

She sleeps in the loft overlooking the living room, an adventurous choice considering the only bathroom is down a flight of stairs.

But what transforms the house from an idiosyncratic cubbyhole into the perfect home for a single person is the guest cottage McLeod built in the backyard. Connected to the main house by a porch that serves as an outdoor dining room, the secondary structure echoes the size of its companion, but here the interior is all white. It contains McLeod’s office/studio — she paints watercolors — plus a jewel box of a guest room. There’s also a loft set up with beds and toys for visiting grandchildren and a bath with a unique, antique double sink she found in Paris on a trip with the late Sarasota decorator Matt Overstreet, whom Susan credits with much of the home’s elegant style.

The backyard has been designed as several garden rooms, including a brick-terraced seating area, an enclosed rose garden, tiny rectangular pond and agrove of bamboo that soars four stories high. Add to all this a large screened porch, and you have an awful lot of choices for living and entertaining, both indoors and out.

Southside Village is dotted with old bungalows, but they are disappearing rapidly. Developers are buying them up and replacing them with million-dollar homes, tasteful for the most part, but each one gone means another piece of Sarasota history has disappeared. And, as Susan’s home demonstrates, what a unique and delightful history we have. Southside Village is changing, no doubt about that; longtime residents are concerned but hopeful that the neighborhood’s charm and history and magnificent old trees will be with us for years to come.