With the renovation of the former Haydon Burns Public Library well underway and plans unveiled during the One Spark festival for adaptive re-use of the Barnett Bank Building, the next historic Downtown architecture likely to be revived are the three buildings on the northeast corner of Forsyth and Laura streets.
Comprising the Florida Life Building, the Old Florida National Bank and the Bisbee Building, the group is referred to as the Laura Street Trio.
The buildings were purchased a year ago, along with the Barnett Bank Building on the southeast corner of the intersection, by Southeast Development Group.
The three structures went up over a period of a decade beginning immediately after the Great Fire of 1901 that virtually destroyed Jacksonville.
Churches and banks were the first to be rebuilt and with the memory of the fire fresh in the minds of restorers, stone — and later, a new building material, concrete — were the construction materials of choice.
The first of the trio to be built was the structure now called the “Marble Bank.”
It opened in 1902 as the headquarters of the Mercantile Exchange Bank and then was purchased three years later by the new Florida Bank & Trust, which eventually became Florida National Bank.
Designed by architect Edward Glidden, the building is sheathed in marble and has six marble columns.
The Marble Bank has a history of renovation that began in 1916 when the interior was demolished and replaced with a grand banking room and the addition of a skylight.
In the 1950s, dropped ceilings were installed that hid the skylight and the plaster detailing that was part of the 1916 renovation.
By 1978, the Jacksonville National Bank owned the building and commissioned architect Robert Broward to restore the interior to the 1916 model, which remained until the building was vacated in the 1990s.
The Bisbee Building was constructed along Forsyth Street next door to the bank in 1908. Designed by Henry J. Klutho, perhaps Jacksonville’s most influential early 20th-century architect, it was the first reinforced concrete frame high-rise building in the South.
Klutho originally intended the 10-story structure to be only 26 feet wide, but the idea of a skyscraper office building in Jacksonville proved to be so attractive that all the space was leased before construction was complete.
That led the owner, William Bisbee, to direct Klutho to modify his design to remove the east wall of the original tower and double the width of the
building.
The Florida Life Building along Laura Street, also a Klutho reinforced concrete design, opened in 1912. Construction began one month after the groundbreaking for Klutho’s St. James Building, which is now City Hall at 117 W, Duval St.
The three buildings survived the widespread demolition of historic Downtown architecture during the 1970s and ‘80s
thanks to the banking industry, said Joel McEachin, city historic planner.
Florida National Bank purchased both of its neighbors as they came on the market and ownership was maintained by NationsBank after Florida National moved into its new building, now the Ed Ball Building.
The three buildings were internally connected and functioned as a single complex for Nations- Bank, combining the retail side of the bank with the back office functions, McEachin said.
In 2002, the city purchased the three buildings, which were subsequently purchased along with the Barnett Bank Building by Orlando-based developer Cameron Kuhn.
He went bankrupt in 2008 during the real estate market crash and lost the properties, which were owned by the lenders until Southeast Development Group purchased the four buildings.
The Barnett Building is scheduled to open as retail, educational and residential space in mid-2016.
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