Old JEA Tower

History

Independent Life Insurance Company

Known as the JEA Tower, this Jacksonville landmark began life as the headquarters for the Independent Life Insurance Company. The Independent Life and Accidental Insurance Company was founded in 1920 by seven businessmen: George Cook Coburn, Jacob Franklin Bryan II, James Henry Gooding, Claybourne Garland Snead, John Samuel Young, James Arthur Howard, and Harry Hill Lyon. The company’s home office was located at 420 Main Street in downtown Jacksonville. Independent Life succeeded in its early years by offering modest death benefits of $75, allowing people with no insurance at all and a small budget to afford life insurance.

After the end of the first year, active insurance premiums amounted to $708,000. By this time, the company had three girls working in the office and fourteen agents in the field. In need of more office space, the Independent Life Insurance Company moved its home office into the Mutual Life Building on the corner of Main and Forsyth Streets.

By 1932, Independent Life had $3,853,000 in active insurance premiums despite it being the early years of the Great Depression. The company continued to grow throughout the Great Depression. In 1934, Independent Life moved its home office to the Rogers Building, which it quickly outgrew. By 1938, the company had moved its offices into the former Board of Trade Building, the first fully air-conditioned office building in Jacksonville.

In 1945, the Independent Life Insurance Company bought the West Building at the corner of Bay and Laura Streets for a home office for $125,000. The five-story building was fully refurbished, with the addition of a new air-conditioning system. Although the company’s operations were limited to four southeastern states, according to Jacob F. Bryan II, it had become the largest weekly premium life insurance company in the world. Within just a few years, the company had outgrown its current office, and it became clear that a new building would be needed to meet its future needs.

The important assignment of planning and designing such a building was turned over to a committee of three of the founders’ sons: Jacob Franklin Bryan III as chairman, Charles Arthur Snead, and Harry Hill Lyon Jr. The committee selected a site on the east side of Julia Street between Duval and Church Streets, across from the former Ambassador Hotel. While the board of directors had in mind a six-story building, the building committee recommended a ten-story building. After many meetings with the architect and the board, a 19-story tower was agreed upon.

Independent Life Building

Standing at 19 stories and 260 feet tall, the 262,000 square-foot building was completed in 1955 as the headquarters for the Independent Life and Accidental Insurance Building. The early-modernist, concrete-reinforced structure was designed by Kemp, Bunch, and Jackson Architects, who also designed many other high-rises in Jacksonville, such as the BB&T Bank Building and the Everbank Center.

The modern, 5-million-dollar skyscraper, located at the corner of Duval and Julia streets, featured a structural steel frame with masonry walls faced primarily in Indiana limestone, accented by black Swedish granite on the first floor and light-colored glazed terra cotta brick on the window spandrels. Its design blended modern, functional elements, such as aluminum window frames and three fully automatic, electronically controlled passenger elevators, with classic touches, including 100-year-old Chinese screen paintings in the fourth-floor lobby and two large white bronze statue groups by Sheldon Bryan in the main lobby, depicting a family looking toward the company slogan: “There is no substitute for life insurance.”

The building’s layout was structured across its floors to handle the massive operations of the company, which processed more than 40,000 applications per week. The basement housed storage facilities, a large print shop, and vaults for microfilmed records, while the ground floor accommodated the mortgage and premium-loan department. The second and third floors were dedicated to high-volume clerical and data work, containing extensive installations of electric accounting machines, 79 specialized filing machines for policy cards, an addressograph department, and employee facilities.

The executive offices were located on the fourth floor alongside a board room, an auditorium, and a cafeteria decorated with murals of Paris scenes and Philippine palidec wood. This level also featured a recessed roof terrace patio that offers a relaxing, porch-like outdoor area for employees. The fifth floor contained additional departmental offices, while the skyscraper was topped off by a large, illuminated “Independent Life” sign with 8-foot-high letters and an 18th-floor Skyroom. This recreational spot featured wide picture windows framed in English Renfrew marble and walls paneled in African zebra wood, offering a panoramic view of the city.

After 20 years, Independent Life had again outgrown its offices and relocated its headquarters to the newly completed Independent Square. Independent Square is known today as the Wells Fargo Center, designed by KBJ Architects, and is Jacksonville’s second-tallest building.

JEA Tower

The Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA) acquired the building in 1976 and relocated its operations there, which is why the building is best known as the old “JEA Tower.” During the late 1980s, JEA purchased the Universal-Marion Building, the former headquarters of Louis Wolfson’s Universal-Marion Company. By 1990, they had relocated most of their offices from the old Independent Life building, officially abandoning the building in March 1999.

There has been a bit of interest in purchasing it throughout the years, but the work needed to renovate such a large structure has been a factor as to why it’s still empty. One proposal involved constructing a 13-story addition on the east building of the tower, as well as a parking garage.

In October 2019, St. Augustine-based Augustine Development Group bought the former JEA tower, intending to develop 140 apartments on the second through 18th floors, a grocery store on the 21,000-square-foot ground floor and basement, and a rooftop terrace with a pool, lounge, and a high-end sushi and seafood restaurant on the top floor. Construction was set to begin in early 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed construction.

In my books, Abandoned Jacksonville: Remnants of the River City and Abandoned Jacksonville: Ruins of the First Coast, you can read about the old Independent Life Building and many other abandoned places.

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