Florida Life Building

The Laura Street Trio is a group of three historic buildings located on and near Laura Street in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. The Trio consists of two perpendicularly arranged skyscrapers, the Florida Life Building and the Bisbee Building, plus a third structure, the Old Florida National Bank (or Marble Bank), which is framed by the other two in a unique pattern. The three buildings, constructed in the wake of the Great Fire of 1901, are architecturally significant, but are currently endangered.

The oldest of the three, the Old Florida National Bank, also known as the Marble Bank, sits on the corner of Forsyth and Laura Streets. It was originally built as the Mercantile Exchange Bank in 1902, just after the Great Fire of 1901 had destroyed nearly all of downtown Jacksonville. Architect Edward H. Glidden designed it in the Classical Revival style. In 1905 it was bought by Florida Bank & Trust, predecessors to the modern Florida National Bank, who renovated and expanded it. It was renovated again in 1916 to include a large banking room with a skylight, plaster detailing, and a coffered ceiling. Another refurbishing in the 1950s added dropped ceilings that covered the skylight and detail work; these were removed in 1976 by the building's then owners, the Jacksonville National Bank, who undertook a substantial restoration to its original appearance.

By the 1990s, however, the building had been sold, and its subsequent owners allowed it to deteriorate dramatically.

The second of the three buildings to be built, the Bisbee Building was constructed between 1908 and 1909, adjacent to the Marble Bank on Forsyth Street. It was designed by prominent Jacksonville architect Henry J. Klutho in a Chicago School-influenced Prairie Style. It was constructed amid a race against two other ten-story projects, 121 Atlantic Place and the Seminole Hotel, to build Jacksonville's first ever skyscraper. The Bisbee won the race, but 121 Atlantic Place was slightly taller, making it Florida's tallest building at the time. The Bisbee Building was the first reinforced concrete highrise anywhere in the Southern United States, and was originally designed to be only 26 feet wide, about half its present width, but demand for office space in the trendy new edifice led the owner to have Klutho add on.

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