Practicing Law Inside the Historic Mann Manor

This summer, The Bartownian ran a feature on Mann Manor, where our office is located. Anyone who reads it tends to ask the same question I get asked in my own lobby: why is a family law firm operating out of a mansion?

I bought the place in 1998, against a good deal of advice, and have been looking after it since. The house was here long before the firm was.

1866 to 1935

The Mann Family and the House on West Main

The Mann family reached Bartow in 1866, having left Georgia in the devastation that followed the Civil War. George William Mann went into cattle, and he did well at it. At its peak, the acreage his operation controlled across Central and South Florida ran into the tens of thousands. He met Kate Douglas Randall in Fort Myers, married in 1900, raised five children, and made their home in Bartow. Around 1925, George began building Kate a house on West Main. He died in 1935, with the work still unfinished.

What Kate contributed is visible from the sidewalk. The grounds were her project, and one of her plantings, an uncommon silk floss tree, still blooms pink. The house she oversaw is a two-story Colonial Revival: Ionic columns holding up a deep portico, a leaded glass transom over the entry, the original wood sash windows.

Large houses are expensive to keep. Over the following decades, this one slipped, and by the 1990s it was in real trouble.

1990 to 1998

Buying a Building Others Wanted Demolished

I opened Sutton Law Firm in 1990, on the opposite side of West Main. For nearly ten years I watched and waited.

When I finally bought the house in 1998, the advice I got was close to unanimous, and it was not encouraging. Most people told me the house was too far gone, that tearing it down was the smart move, and that a law firm had no business trying to save it.

I disagreed. Even in that condition, the craftsmanship was obvious, and so was the fact that nothing like it was going to be built again.

1998 to 2011

Restoring Mann Manor

Plenty of old buildings get gutted and called "historic" anyway, with new everything behind the original columns. I wanted the real thing: restored inside and out.

The original red oak flooring was unearthed. Details were researched instead of guessed at, and fixtures were sourced to the period. The window treatments follow designs used in the White House. The chandelier in the foyer carries crystals cut to match those at Buckingham Palace. In October 2011, the property was nominated for and added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Client Privacy

Why a Historic Home Suits Family Law Work

The manor works well for this kind of law in two ways: the rooms and where the house is located. People come to my Bartow office during hard stretches. They are ending marriages, working out where their children will be on which nights, raising the question of whether a parent can still manage their own finances, or untangling a family business. Those are not conversations anyone wants to have within earshot of strangers.

A house accommodates that in ways an office suite does not. Rooms have doors. There is a porch with rocking chairs on it and a fireplace inside, and there is space to keep one conversation clear of the next. We use it: we take measures to schedule family law consultations so that we avoid having more than one client in the office at a time.

The location does the rest. My office sits directly across the street from the Polk County courthouse, the main hub of the 10th Judicial Circuit, which is where a fair amount of this work ends up.

The same thoughtfulness extends to how I have staffed the firm. Matthew Kovschak has practiced alongside me since 1993, handling commercial litigation, bankruptcy, and appellate work at the state and federal level. Our attorneys, law clerks, and paralegals all stay current on a client's file, so a question does not wait on one person being free to answer it.

The Firm Today

Maintaining a Bartow Landmark

The house is not roped off. Clients meet here, and visitors and school groups come through. It is a working building that happens to date to the 1920s, and I think of myself as looking after it for a while.

A law practice is not so different. People bring me something that matters to them when things have gone wrong, and my job is to take care of it. If you are dealing with a family law matter, an appeal, a guardianship question, or an estate, I would be glad to talk it through.