Laura Street Trio
The Laura Street Trio is an ensemble of three historic buildings on and near the Laura Street in Jacksonville, Florida. The trio consists of two mutually perpendicular skyscrapers, the Florida Life Building and the Bisbee Building, and a third building, the Old Florida National Bank (or Marble Bank), which is flanked by the two high-rise buildings. The three buildings were built after the fire of 1901 and are architecturally significant, but currently endangered.
Structures
Old Florida National Bank
The oldest of the three buildings, the Old Florida National Bank, which is also known under the name of Marble Bank, on the corner of Forsyth and Laura Street. It was originally built in 1902 as the Mercantile Exchange Bank, one year after the fire, which had in 1901 destroyed the major part of Downtown Jacksonville. The architect Edward H. Glidden had designed the building in the style of neoclassicism. It was acquired in 1905 by Florida Bank & Trust, a predecessor company of today's Florida National Bank, which it then renewed and extended. It was built in 1916 but renovated several times to accommodate a large main hall with skylight, stucco details and a coffered ceiling. Another refurbishment in the 1950s added suspended ceilings, with which the skylight and the other details were hidden. This ceiling suspension in 1976 by the then owner of the building, the Jacksonville National Bank, removed, as this could make a major restoration of the original appearance of the building.
In the 1990s, the building was sold and the subsequent owners had forfeited it dramatically.
Bisbee Building
The Bisbee Building was built as the second of the three buildings 1908-1909 and is adjacent to the Marble Bank at the Forsyth Street. It was designed by the prominent architect Henry J. Jackson Bettviller Klutho in a influenced by the Chicago School, Prairie Style. Its construction coincided with a race to the first skyscraper of the city against two other ten -story buildings, 121 Atlantic Place and the Seminole Hotel. The Bisbee Building was finished first, but 121 Atlantic Place was a little higher after its construction, so that it replaced the Bisbee Building as the tallest building in Florida at that time. The Bisbee Building was the first built with reinforced concrete high-rise at all in the South. The design was originally only a width of 26 feet (just under eight meters), but the need for office space in the new modern building prompted the owner to the building to build bigger.
Similar to the other two buildings of the ensemble and the Bisbee Building was finally abandoned, and the rapid decline began.
Florida Life Building
The Florida Life Building was also designed by Klutho and was built between 1911 and 1912. It is directly on the rear wall of the Marble Bank and is the only of the three buildings whose front is actually directed to Laura Street. It was built simultaneously with the planned also Klutho of St. James Building (now the Jacksonville City Hall). It has a height of 45 meters and is one of eleven floors; it was at the time of its construction the tallest building in the city and throughout Florida, although this priority shaft lasted only one year, until the completion of the Heard National Bank Building. Wayne Wood of Jacksonville Historic Landmarks Commission judges the narrow and well-proportioned tower that the building " Jacksonville's purest representation of a, skyscraper ' was and perhaps still is ." As the Bisbee Building is also this building is an example of a influenced by the Chicago school building Kluthos in the Prairie Style.
The building was commissioned by the Florida Life Insurance Company, but the company collapsed in 1915 together. The building changed over the years several times the owner. In 1994, the then owner of the building, the Nations Bank, remove the original capitals on the top floor, the building was damaged. Like the other two buildings was exposed to the expiration of this building also.
Restoration plans
In the 2000s it was recognized at the Laura Street Trio as one of the most significant and most endangered historic building ensembles Jacksonville. Under the Mayor John Adrian Delaney bought 2002, the City of Jacksonville, all three buildings in order to transfer it to a developer who could restore it. A building contractor from Orlando bought the Laura Street Trio and the nearby Barnett National Bank Building, but he went bankrupt before he could renovate the building. The project came to a halt, 2010, a sedentary in Jacksonville group of investors together with a company from Tallahassee a new plan for the renovation of the three buildings and the Barnett National Bank Building in front of which was an integral part of the construction of a fifth building. In June 2011, the Atkins Group applied for tax relief in the amount of five million U.S. dollars to accelerate the phase I of the project can.