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 D-55  BISBEE BUILDING 47 WEST FORSYTH STREET DATE: 1908-1909 ARCHITECT: H. J. Klutho BUILDERS: Southern Ferro Concrete Company and W. T. Hadlow & Company As the
South’s
first
reinforced-concrete frame high-rise office building, the Bisbee Building has more kinship to the Chicago
style
than the Prairie School. However, this building was of central
importance in introducing the modern architecture of the Midwest
to Jacksonville, which resulted in the city's becoming the Southern
epicenter of the Prairie School. This
building was originally constructed to be only twenty-six feet wide
(one-half of its present width) as a
narrow skyscraper ten
stories high, emphasizing its height.
The novelty of its being
Jacksonville's first "skyscraper" made the office space highly sought
after, and the building was completely rented before construction was
finished. Thus the owner, William A. Bisbee, directed the
architect H. J. Klutho to double the size of the building. The
east wall of the original narrow tower was removed and an additional
vertical section was added, resulting in its present
configuration.
The
Bisbee Building's ten-story reinforced-concrete
frame was structurally daring for 1908.
According to
Klutho, this system was so new that the Metropolitan Life Insurance
Company refused to make a construction loan until full engineering data
were submitted, and their own architect was dispatched to Jacksonville
to go over the figures.
The
Forsyth Street facade is faced
with polished limestone and terra-cotta, and features broad plate
glass "Chicago-style" windows, a projecting
copper
cornice, and various abstract
geometric ornaments. This building is an early example of
Klutho's affinity for the architectural concepts that were
pioneered in Chicago.
  The ornamentation on the Bisbee's facade is neither Classical nor quite yet Prairie School, but there are tentative overtures to Sullivan's foliate designs in the three glazed terra cotta pier capitals at the ninth-floor level (left) and to Wright's Larkin Building in the cross motif at the second-story level (above). Nearly every Prairie style building constructed in Jacksonville over the next 15 years had some variation of this "Prairie School cross" motif.
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Exceprts
of this work may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes
with credit to Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage by Wayne W. Wood. All Rights Reserved, Wayne W. Wood and Ó University Presses of Florida. |
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