Whitfield CDP (Manatee County), FL

Whitfield, also known as Whitfield Estates, is a small Manatee County CDP near Sarasota Bay. Its present street pattern began with a 682-acre wooded tract and the 218-acre bayfront estate of Alfred Ringling. In 1924, Whitfield Estates Inc. purchased the property and laid out a planned residential development under Louis Broughton Whitfield. The original scheme included homes, an 18-hole golf course, a hotel, a yacht basin, and man-made islands, a very Florida-land-boom idea.

Much of that grand plan changed after the boom faded, but the neighborhood's early houses and street names still carry the development's imprint. Historic districts along Broughton Street and Lantana Avenue preserve clusters of those residences, while the bayfront and nearby US 41 keep the area connected to the Bradenton-Sarasota corridor. Whitfield has the feel of a place built from a speculative dream that settled into a lived-in neighborhood, with old plans still visible in the blocks. That early arrangement still gives the community a recognizable street-by-street layout beside the bay.