Project Update - Historic Bank Restoration

What were they thinking in the 50's?

I love ground-up development. There is something extremely gratifying about getting to imagine a whole new place with new architecture and homes for hundreds of people. I consider myself extremely lucky to get to do that kind of work.

At the same time, there is also something extremely gratifying about taking a building with more than a hundred years of history and restoring it to its former glory.

The 1950s were a weird time. I’ll leave it to the architecture experts for commentary of why this happened, but around the world, thousands of buildings were built or renovated in line with a new kind of modernist architecture:

Rejecting ornament and embracing minimalism, Modernism became the single most important new style or philosophy of architecture and design of the 20th century. It was associated with an analytical approach to the function of buildings, a strictly rational use of (often new) materials, structural innovation and the elimination of ornament.

Even a relatively small town in Alabama was not immune. The photo below shows the original First National Bank building in downtown Florence. Situated next to it was the Majestic Theater. in the 50’s, the theater burned and the bank took the opportunity to purchase the lot and both expand the bank’s footprint and “bring the architecture into the 20th century”

The result was that this beautiful building:

Was covered in a nice, “modern” façade and became this:

Here’s a more recent photo:

And an aerial:

For a while we’ve wondered: is there any hope for the building? Does the old façade exist and if it does, could it be salvaged if the “modern” stone was removed?

It took some crawling around, but the answer is a resounding yes. Thankfully, it was cheaper to simply remove the windows and put the stone on top of the façade than to completely remove the old material.

Here’s the view we found by removing some drop-ceiling tiles in an office at the front of the building:

They even left the light fixture!

On Monday we begin removing the “modern“ facade to expose the original bank underneath. There will surely be damage to the original limestone from anchors, but we don’t expect to find anything that can’t be repaired or dealt with. Once the stone is removed we will develop a plan to restore it and eventually plan to renovate the building into a new use (not right away).

Thanks for reading this special Jambalaya on an exciting historic restoration and eventual reuse project. I will share more here as we discover it!

Joel