Founding father of Sarasota School of Architecture, Gene Leedy, was selected by the University of Florida School of Architecture as the recipient of the school’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Leedy pioneered innovative work with pre-stressed concrete and the development of long-span “double-tee” beams, the sliding glass door in both wood and aluminum, and introduced the traditional walled-in courtyard to modern houses. Colleagues and friends with Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller, he designed projects throughout the U.S. including Hawaii where he has been a design consultant for Alfred A. Yee and Associates for more than 25 years. Leedy’s design of the Lifsey President’s House at USF in Tampa was selected over 166 other entries. The largest selection of his buildings is in Winter Haven, where he still resides in the home he built in 1956. In 1988, Leedy won the lifetime design achievement award from the Florida Association of Architects.
He was installed into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in 1992. He received the outstanding alumni award from UF’s College of Architecture in 1993. With a UF degree in architecture, Leedy was a member of the SAE fraternity and designed the house that was built in 1963. In 2012, his design placed thirteenth in the competition to identify the top 100 buildings in Florida that represent the best in architectural achievement.
The Leedy Lifetime Works Tour, organized by Main Street Winter Haven, is available online with photos, videos and audio tours of his work. The accomplished photographer has a permanent collection of his architectural photography of his work as: “Neither a break with tradition nor a hypocritical imitation of tradition, but an effort to satisfy the deep surging emotional needs of the individual to answer the physical requirements of living. It is concerned with the honest use of materials, straight forward structural expression, the play of light and shadow, the excitement of spatial experience, and visual strength and power.”