Rosemary District

The Rosemary District sits just north of Fruitville Road, and its bones are as old as Sarasota itself — the area was part of the original 1885 plat of the Town of Sarasota, and Rosemary Cemetery, established in 1886 at Eighth Street and Central Avenue, gave the neighborhood the name it adopted in 1994. Before that, this was Overtown, Sarasota's first documented African American settlement. Lewis Colson, who arrived in 1884 and drove the first survey stake for the new town in 1885, donated land in 1897 for Bethlehem Baptist Church, the city's first African American church. By the 1920s Overtown was a thriving commercial community of theaters, shops and gathering places, and in 2002 the Overtown Historic District — roughly along Central Avenue between 4th and 9th Streets — was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The modern chapter began in October 2014, when the city created the Rosemary Residential Overlay District, allowing up to 75 residential units per acre where 25 had been the cap. Development followed quickly: more than 1,500 residences moved through the pipeline within a few years, joined by restaurants, galleries and studios. Today the neighborhood brands itself the Rosemary Art & Design District, and its mix of history, murals and new architecture makes it one of downtown Sarasota's most distinctive places to live.

Housing here spans more scales and styles than anywhere else downtown. The tallest presence is BLVD, the 18-story tower at Tamiami Trail and Boulevard of the Arts on the district's western edge, with 49 large residences and a rooftop pool. A few blocks east on 4th Street, Zahrada and Zahrada 2 — designed by Sarasota firm Halflants + Pichette — take the opposite approach: three-level, glass-fronted townhome-style condominiums with terraces and viewing decks, first launched in 2017 and often cited as heirs to the city's midcentury design legacy. Rosemary Square wraps 30 apartments around its arts courtyard, Vanguard Lofts added six modern townhomes, and rental communities such as CitySide and Sarasota Flats arrived in the first wave after the 2014 overlay. At the district's southern doorstep, The Collection at 1335 Second Street offers 12 residences in a 10-story building by MK Equity with ARS Architecture. The common thread is contemporary architecture at a walkable scale.

The neighborhood's shared amenity is its arts infrastructure. Rosemary Square, the three-building campus at Central Avenue and Boulevard of the Arts completed in 2019, houses the Sarasota Ballet School, Sarasota Contemporary Dance and the Players Performing Arts Studio around an open-air courtyard; it won an AIA Regional & Urban Design Award in 2024 for turning the block into 'the living room for the neighborhood.' The Overtown Mural Initiative has spread large-scale murals across district walls, with guided tours and regular markets organized by the Rosemary Art & Design District. And the neighborhood's front porch is The Bay, the 53-acre bayfront park whose first phase opened in October 2022 at 1055 Boulevard of the Arts, with a 14-acre second phase underway toward a 2027 completion.

Days in the Rosemary District tend to start at a table. Station 400 serves breakfast and brunch in a restored train depot on Lemon Avenue, and The Breakfast Company opened in 2025 at 411 N. Orange Avenue in the space long known as The Rosemary. Lefty's Oyster & Seafood Bar took over the former beer-garden corner on Lemon Avenue in January 2025, and the Parkside compound pairs Arts & Central with Origin Craft Beer & Pizza Café. Between meals there are design showrooms like Home Resource on Central Avenue, gallery walls and murals to wander, and rehearsal-studio windows where dance companies work in view of the sidewalk. Evenings end well with a ten-minute walk down Boulevard of the Arts to the mangrove walkways and sunset views at The Bay.