Whenever the crew from American Pickers came to the area they checked with Sarasota Architectural Salvage for leads though that interaction never made it onto the show.
Mike Wolfe and the late Frank Fritz visited Sarasota several times for their reality show that premiered on Jan. 18. 2010, and documented their travels to find antiques to sell or add to their personal collections.
In 2019, they visited the Sarasota area to purchase circus banners and memorabilia and in 2011 they visited several Sarasota residents, including the founders of Fruitville Grove organic farm.
Those visits included stops at Sarasota Architectural Salvage, where they picked up leads to potential sellers.
SAS owner Jesse White asked producers who contacted him if they could just include a scene where he handed off those leads, but because the show never featured any antique or salvage shops, that never happened.
The next time the American Pickers are in town, they can still reach out to White directly but only by cell phone, as White recently announced plans to close the Central Avenue site of Sarasota Architectural Salvage.
Current plans call for the warehouse, located just north of downtown Sarasota’s Rosemary District at 1093 Central Ave., to close for business at the end of April.
After that, the sale of the 10,000-square-foot warehouse, which is located on roughly a half-acre of land, is scheduled to close on June 1.
Salvage and antique bargains available at 50% off
Until then, Sarasota Architectural Salvage is open for business with items in stock sold at 50% off though negotiations may also occur at the cash register — like when Palmetto resident Heather Stott brought several items, including an antique brass doorknob, to the front counter for checkout on Feb. 9.
“Some of them I took out of random boxes that are $15 for the whole box,” Stott said.
“How’s $30 for all of that?” White countered as they settled on a price.
“I’ve always operated more as a store than a yard sale, so it’s taking a little training for me to be so loosey-goosey,” White later told the Herald-Tribune.
It was Stott’s second trip to Sarasota Architectural Salvage in four days.
“I have an antique door and I came in on Friday and I was getting pieces for it,” said Stott. “And I came back for more pieces.”
Stott represented one aspect of the Sarasota Architectural Salvage clientele, which also includes interior decorators and business owners seeking an accent piece for identity or to establish a sense of place.
“We are a store of projects,” White said.
Many area restaurant owners have incorporated accent pieces from Sarasota Architectural Salvage as part of their decor.
“When they come in here, they can find decor that’s kind of one of a kind, that sets them apart from other restaurants,” White said.
“I shouldn’t name any names,” he later added. “I name one, I should name them all.”
Every inch a place for display at Sarasota Architectural Salvage
The sheer volume of stuff may be overwhelming for a first-time customer but White said there is a sense of order inside the warehouse.
Antiques and collectibles are on display up front and architectural salvage — including doors, windows and lumber — in back and chandeliers hanging from the 30-foot-tall ceiling.
Beyond that, display locations are based more on available space.
A child’s microscope and lab set shares space on one shelf with collectible beer steins, while the shelf just below features an antique travel iron.
Just across the aisle, a movie projector converted into a lamp shares display space with collectible plates.
Elsewhere, a framed autographed CD of Skid Row’s “The Gang’s All Here” sits on the music stand of an antique organ made by W.W. Putnam & Co. from Staunton, Virginia.
A disparate collection of toys range from an ornate kite to power packs for an “American Flyer,” model railroad set.
Decorative vases share shelf space with old World Book encyclopedia volumes, while antique clocks share wall space with a wooden “Miller High Life” promotional keg end and a lamp made out of a Sierra Nevada Brewing Company beer bucket.
“One of the charms of the store, I really think, has been that it is such a huge space,” White said. “Huge ceilings and lots of stuff so people can come here and find stuff for their whole project.”
Preservation, reuse and ‘embodied energy’ at Sarasota Architectural Salvage
When White started the business roughly 23 years ago, it was a way to apply the knowledge gained while studying for his master’s degree in environmental resource management from Antioch University in New England.
The business model was simple: go into structures prior to being torn down and harvest what he could so it could be repurposed and saved from the landfill.
As part of that model, White opened satellite locations, including one at University Town Center that closed after the COVID-19 pandemic because a key staff member needed to work in her own family’s business.
White would look for items with “good bones” and solid structural integrity that could then spark creativity for his customers.
“We try and pull the most interesting architectural features, offer them for reuse,” White said.
He also wanted to preserve the “embodied energy” of an object.
Doors frequently get reused as doors but turn-of-the-century windows may see a second life as an art project or a greenhouse.
“When you use materials that were harvested 100 years ago, in theory you’re preventing the need to harvest those same materials today,” White said. “I see materials and I see what they could be and I try to give the opportunity for another creative person to give it a second life.”
What’s next for Sarasota Architectural Salvage?
While White is closing the warehouse storage and retail space, he plans to continue Sarasota Architectural Salvage as a purely online sales experience modeled after a practice already used for kitchen equipment and appliances that were never sold out of the Central Avenue store.
Under that model, once White and his team arrive at a jobsite, they will take pictures of items and post the availability online.
“Then people come to the job site and are able to purchase directly from the jobsite,” White said. “That way it avoids having to have a bricks-and-mortar operation.”
Without the additional costs for transportation and overhead of a building, White figures he can offer lower prices.
“So if I were selling hard-pine flooring here for $2 a linear foot it might be going for 50 cents a linear foot from a job site,” White said.
That model will still allow White to achieve one of his main goals, the preservation of the embodied energy of older structures.
“My concept with building this business has always been around embodied energy, which is kind of an esoteric concept,” White said. “But the idea is all things have an embodied energy — what it costs to grow the wood, the time, energy, materials, sunlight, water, resources to grow it.
“If that house gets torn down and it gets thrown into the landfill we lose all that embodied energy,” he added. “Our goal is to take a beam, flooring, a piece of furniture, a sculpture, some wrought iron, whatever it might be, to give it another chance to find a new home so it might live another 50 years in another home.”
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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota business used by ‘American Pickers’ is closing its warehouse
Reporting by Earle Kimel and Ella Thompson, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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