Icons Only: Who Better to Restore Two Hallmarks of Gene Leedy’s Legacy Than His Longtime Protégé?

Welcome to Icons Only, a series about loving restorations of historically significant homes.

For Sarasota, Florida, architect Max Strang, the opportunity to restore the home of modernist architect Gene Leedy was the culmination of a lifelong calling. Strang, whose namesake architecture, interiors, and landscape firm has offices in Sarasota, Winter Haven, and Miami, was raised in a Winter Haven home designed by the Sarasota School of Architecture founding member, and spent his childhood visiting the house that Leedy designed for himself and lived in for more than 60 years. (Strang’s parents were close with the Leedy family.)

The Gene Leedy House is one of 11 in the Craney Spec Houses Historic District, a collection of modular homes built by the architect between 1956 and 1958 in the Florida modern style that Leedy and other early Sarasota School figures—among them Paul Rudolph, Ralph Twitchell, and Victor Lundy—pioneered during the post-World War II housing boom. (The stretch of Winter Haven is known colloquially as "Leedy Land" or "Leedy Row.") At the time, Leedy and his peers’ use of open floor plans and exposed framing, as well as louvered windows and sliding glass doors that let in natural light and cross breezes, was considered radical in residential architecture. Leedy’s own house exemplified many defining characteristics of the burgeoning regional style, from its mix of concrete, warm wood, and floor-to-ceiling glass to its open layout and cantilever overhangs; elements that both integrated the architecture with the local climate and offered protection from the elements (which, in Florida, include heat, rain, and mosquitos).

While Leedy’s designs played a big role in Strang’s childhood, it wasn’t until Strang left Winter Haven to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville (Leedy’s alma mater) that he realized the profundity of the architect’s influence. "What was interesting is when you are surrounded by all Leedy’s architecture in this small town, it was normal," he says. "[When] I went off to college I really missed being in a town that was surrounded by great architecture." It was that revelation that led Strang to enroll in architecture school, and when it came time for his professional internship, the opportunity to work with Leedy was the obvious choice.