Developer Owen Burns built the El Vernona Hotel–John Ringling Hotel in 1926 at 111 North Tamiami Trail, naming it for his wife. Designed by Dwight James Baum and built in 1926 by developer Owen Burns, Burns named it after his wife. The hotel opened on New Year's Eve 1926 and quickly became one of Sarasota’s grand places.
After the stock market crash of 1929, John Ringling bought the building and renamed it the John Ringling Hotel. In 1964 it was renamed the John Ringling Towers and converted to apartments; by 1980 it had fallen vacant and was deteriorating. On March 5, 1987 the building was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, and it was documented in the Historic American Buildings Survey as El Vernona–John Ringling Hotel, HABS No. FL-405.
Despite that recognition, the structure was razed in 1998 to make room for the Sarasota Ritz‑Carlton. Between the resort's 1926 opening and its demolition in 1998, this address carried three names - El Vernona, John Ringling Hotel, John Ringling Towers - and each one marks a different chapter in Sarasota's story, ending here on North Tamiami Trail where the building itself no longer stands.