Seagate, is located along Sarasota Bay in Manatee County, Florida, and was the former winter estate of Powel Crosley Jr., a noted Cincinnati, Ohio, industrialist and entrepreneur.

After allowing the Army Air Corps to use the home for airmen who were training at a nearby airbase during World War II, Crosley sold the property in 1947.

The Crosley home and 45 acres (18 hectares) of adjacent property were formally added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 21, 1983.

Nearby fresh water access is documented in early plats that may have been constant, since adjacent middens attest to a long period of occupation.

[citation needed] In 1929 a wealthy industrialist named Powel Crosley Jr. purchased a 63-acre (25-hectare) parcel of bay-front property and had a built a winter retreat along Sarasota Bay for his wife, Gwendolyn B.

[9] In the early 1980s the Campeau Corporation of America, a real estate developer, acquired the property, intending to build a condominium community on the site and use the historic house as a clubhouse.

The property was formally added to the register on January 21, 1983, but the planned real estate project failed when the economy faltered shortly thereafter.

[12] In 1991 the Manatee County Commission paid $1.6 million for 16.5 acres (6.7 hectares) of the original subdivision along the bay front that contained the structures built in 1929 for Crosley and his wife with the intention of preserving and renovating the estate.

The University of South Florida purchased the remaining 28.4 acres (11.5 hectares) for $2 million as a site for future expansion of the satellite campus.

The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee's campus on the former Seagate property includes a three-story, 134,540-square-foot (12,499 m2) building on a 28.4-acre (11.5-hectare) parcel of land, in addition to facilities in other nearby locations.

The 45-acre (18-hectare) property in the southwest corner of mainland Manatee County included the 11,000-square-foot (1,000 m2) house with its porte-cochere entry, flagstone patio and walkways, a swimming pool, fountains, a seaplane dock, and a yacht basin.

Some reports stated that Paul W. Bergmann, a Sarasota contractor, built the two-and-a-half-story, cast stone and stucco home for the Crosleys in 135 days.

Other major features include double louvered and screened pocket doors and transoms to provide privacy while allowing the natural flow of sea breezes to cool the house through window and door grilles and rejas; an intercom system wired into the walls of the house and servant quarters; electrical wiring under the terra cotta floor tiles to provide electric power for lamps; chamfered, polychrome-stenciled pecky cypress beams; galleon carvings on the loggia; massive carved doors and woodwork (designed and installed by the Zoller Lumber Company); tiled patterns on the interior floors and the main staircase; plaster ornamentation; and stained glass of ochre and lavender, randomly placed in casement and French windows.

[12] The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee now occupies a 28.4-acre (11.5-hectare) parcel of the Seagate property along Tamiami Trail (US-41) that was not part of the 1982 nomination of the estate to the National Register that only indicated the existing buildings, but the land was added to the 1983 listing due to the significant civil engineering that Crosley designed for drainage, dredging and filling, marine structures, and a yacht basin containing a tide level gauge.