In 1971, Elling Eide was a promising young academic, working on his doctoral thesis on Chinese poetry and teaching at the University of Illinois. Then came a letter that set in motion the creation of either a wonder or a folly: A great library of Chinese literature housed amid the Spanish moss and alligator ponds of Florida’s gulf coast.
The newly opened library is a testament to one person’s vision — tunnel vision, some might say — of bringing a sliver of academia to this quiet area of beaches, bars and subdivisions.
Instead of hiring connoisseurs and agents to buy recognizable treasures, he worked mostly alone, pursuing a passion that few neighbors were aware of until after his death five years ago.
In some ways, the main actor is the property itself. Eide’s maternal grandfather bought it in 1935 and summoned his daughter and son-in-law from Chicago to look after him. Eide was born there that year, but left to attend Harvard University, serve in the US Marine Corps, study in Taiwan and pursue a career in Chinese studies.
In 1968, his parents inherited the 37.2-hectare tract, but found it hard to maintain.
In 1972, it was their turn to summon their child to Sarasota to help, writing him to come back home. Eide took a two-year leave from academia, thinking he could put the property in order, help his parents build a retirement house and get back to his world of scholarship.
However, the new house was more work than he expected. His parents became ill. The US Internal Revenue Service began an audit. Slowly, family members and friends say, Eide slid into depression. His father died in 1978, and his mother five years later. By then, he was 48, too old to restart his career.
Instead, he decided to bring the world of Sinology to Sarasota. Already a voracious collector, he doubled down on his passion, buying entire collections of academic journals and books.
His research specialty had been China’s most famous poet, Li Po (李白), who lived during the Tang Dynasty of the seventh to 10th centuries, often called China’s greatest.
That dynasty became his focus. He amassed 75,000 volumes, including 50,000 in Chinese, one of the largest private Chinese-language libraries in the world, and larger than many well-known universities’ collections.
A onetime fitness buff with a dark brown beard, he became a paunchy recluse. He wore old clothes, chain-smoked Winstons and drove a beat-up Volkswagen bus.
His treasures sprawled across the property like shipwrecked chests. All the buildings were stacked floor to ceiling. He kept air conditioners running to prevent rot, but the space was unusable for any visitor.
In 2011, he had a series of strokes. He asked for help from his cousin Harold Mitchell, an insurance agent in Chicago who had been in awe of Eide since his childhood. Mitchell knew all the family stories about how Eide was an expert unicyclist who became a cheerleader at Harvard, pedaling along the sidelines at football games with a giant bone in his hand to stir up the crowd.
So Mitchell agreed to move down. A genial dealmaker, he settled permitting issues and ironed out the countless details of building a large library and visitor center.
His eyesight deteriorating, Eide could hear the machines pounding the pilings into the earth, but could not see them. In 2012, with the building still a skeleton, Eide died.
The bright, airy building opened last autumn for the annual conference of the T’ang Studies Society.
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