(This column was first published in the Tallahassee Democrat on Oct. 12, 2008.)
It’s the era of the Tallahassee high-rise.
The 23-story Plaza Tower nears completion on Kleman Plaza, where the 11-story Tallahassee Center opened in 2006. That’s also the year the 14-story Tennyson opened on Monroe Street.
Throw in an earlier wave of high-rise buildings – Holiday Inn (12 stories), Doubletree Hotel (16 stories), Highpoint Center (16 stories), Department of Education (19 stories) and new Capitol (22 stories) – and downtown Tallahassee is developing a skyline.
Yet at its heart remains the original: the Exchange Building, Tallahassee’s first skyscraper. All six stories of it, depending on how you count.
“I don’t know that there’s a better property downtown,” said Pat Roberts, president of the Florida Association of Broadcasters, sitting in his second-floor corner office. “Much of the building still has the character of when it was built.”
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Exchange Building, on the southeast corner of Monroe Street and College Avenue. Built in late 1927, it formally opened March 3, 1928. Some Tallahasseeans know it as the Midyette-Moor Building, for the insurance company that owned and occupied it from 1935 to 1973.
It was the city’s tallest building when it opened (if you didn’t count the dome of the Old Capitol). To passers-by, it’s a six-story building. But always it’s been a five-floor building with a basement – and an 18-foot-high first floor.
It was built by the Exchange Bank, which occupied the first floor. Milton Smith, owner-editor of this newspaper, greeted its opening with his usual Chamber of Commerce exuberance. He hailed it as “marking a substantial new era in the progress of Northwest Florida.”
Smith also larded praise on Exchange Bank President Cincinnatus L. Mizell, who had founded the bank in Tallahassee 15 years earlier. Smith said Mizell had “ably directed the enterprise through the stormy years of finance.”
Such is irony – and tragedy. On Aug. 30, 1932, Mizell committed suicide with a .38-caliber pistol in his bank office. It was the Depression, and a day earlier the struggling Exchange Bank had begun limiting withdrawals. Mizell, 58, left a note asking that his $25,000 life-insurance policy be used to help pay the bank’s stockholders. The building was sold at auction, then bought two years later by Midyette-Moor.
By the 1940s, the building was the business address in Tallahassee. Physicians, dentists and attorneys – including future Florida Gov. LeRoy Collins and future Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice B.K. Roberts – filled its 52 offices. A 236-space, three-story parking garage was added.
The buff-colored brick building was an architectural gem. It was designed by Edwards and Sayward, an Atlanta architectural firm famous for designing churches, courthouses and public buildings all over the Southeast, including many of the original buildings at Florida State University. A row of cast-stone eagles encircles the top floor. Over the main doorway is a frieze with eight figures, including a horse, a bee and a lion.
The building suffered a bit in the 1970s. Midyette-Moor moved to Magnolia Drive and sold the building to a group of local businessmen. They jury-rigged a second floor into the high-ceilinged first floor to provide more rental space. Maintenance declined. The bank area was rented to a beauty shop.
But in 1984, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1985, Wilton Miller bought the building for his Bryant Miller and Olive law firm. Taking advantage of tax-free bond money and historic-preservation tax credits, Miller spent $1.2 million to restore the building.
The original arched windows overlooking College Avenue were uncovered. Brass teller cages, the bank vault and door transoms were restored. The makeshift second floor was removed, revealing a small mezzanine in the first floor, which was again rented to a bank. In 2006, Miller sold the building and parking garage to a local group, including Roberts.
“Miller and Olive spent a lot of money making it a nice piece of architecture again,” said architect Jim Roberson, who oversaw the renovations. “It had been ruined on the interior. It didn’t look anything like it does now.”
Built for $125,000, the building is now appraised at more than $4 million. Each floor has 3,100 square feet and a warren of window-lit offices hugging an L-shaped corridor. It relies on an old-fashioned boiler for heat and chilled water for cooling. Visitors ride Florida’s second-oldest still-operating elevator – which occasionally gets stuck when overloaded.
“It’s got its nuances,” said Roberts. “But it’s still a great old building.”
Gerald Ensley was a reporter and columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat from 1980 until his retirement in 2015. He died in 2018 following a stroke. The Tallahassee Democrat is publishing columns capturing Tallahassee’s history from Ensley’s vast archives each Sunday through 2024 in the Opinion section as part of the TLH 200: Gerald Ensley Memorial Bicentennial Project.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Gerald Ensley: Exchange Building still stands tall downtown
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