The Colson mural by Kaitlin Ramirez (Swirly Painter) in the Rosemary District.
At the corner of Eighth Street and Central Avenue, long before high-rises, restaurants and boutiques reshaped the Rosemary District, a modest yellow stucco building stood as one of the few safe havens for Black travelers in Southwest Florida. It was called the Colson Hotel.
Built in 1926 during Sarasota’s land boom, the Colson was more than a boarding house. For the city’s Black residents and visitors during segregation, it offered something rare and profound: safety, dignity and belonging.
The story begins with Irene Colson and the Rev. Lewis Colson, who arrived in Sarasota in the late 1880s. Irene was a midwife and caregiver to the Black community, and her husband, Lewis, a formerly enslaved man who helped survey and plat the city of Sarasota, became the first pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, the city’s first Black congregation.
Irene Colson and the Rev. Lewis Colson.
Edwin Burns, the brother of prominent Sarasota developer Owen Burns, was inspired by the Colsons’ leadership and faith, and when he built the Colson Hotel, he named it after them. The 25-room building included a barber shop and a soft drink parlor, serving Black laborers, musicians and families who were excluded from white-only hotels downtown.
The Colson became a crossroads for Sarasota’s Black working class, serving as a temporary home for cooks, chauffeurs, circus workers, railroad workers, filling station workers and others who kept the city’s new economy functioning. Most were migrants, building lives in a segregated city where opportunity existed but housing was restricted.
When the Great Depression struck, Burns opened a lunchroom next to the hotel to feed hungry children, both Black and white, through the Episcopal Church Service League. It became one of Sarasota’s earliest interracial relief efforts.
The Colson Hotel in disrepair.
Over time, the Colson fell into disrepair as redevelopment transformed what was then known as the Overtown neighborhood, and the building was nearly demolished. But in 2023, it was named one of Sarasota’s Six to Save by the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation. A group of partners, including DreamLarge (Sarasota Magazine’s parent company), the Gulf Coast Community Foundation and the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation, banded together to restore the hotel as The Colson Collective, a shared space for artists, nonprofits and other civic and cultural groups. Plans for adjacent parcels include complementary retail and housing that extend the site’s historic character and purpose.
The Colson Hotel’s rebirth also reflects a broader cultural reckoning in Sarasota and a desire to preserve and honor the people and places that shaped it. From the restoration of the Leonard Reid House in Newtown, which honors an early prominent Black settler in Sarasota to the transformation of the 53-acre The Bay Park, and now the renewal of the Colson, the city is remembering its own story.
“When we lose places like the Colson, we lose our collective memory,” says Barry Preston of the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation. “When we restore them, we restore part of ourselves.”
An exterior rendering of the soon-to-be restored hotel, now called The Colson Collective.
An interior rendering of the soon-to-be restored hotel, now called The Colson Collective.
If all goes as planned, the Colson restoration will begin in 2026, not just as a historic landmark but as a reminder that true progress is not measured in buildings alone. “The Colson isn’t just a building, it’s a symbol,” says Anand Pallegar, founder and CEO of DreamLarge. “It represents how far we’ve come and how much further we have to go.”
