50 years ago, Independent Life was more than a tall building in Jacksonville | Mark Woods

One week ago, the large yellow letters that spelled out “WELLS FARGO” came down.

One by one, a vintage 1958 Sikorsky S-58 helicopter carried them away, leaving the top of the 37-story building in the middle of Jacksonville’s Northbank blank again.

The photos and video that Times-Union photographer Bob Self took of that moment felt like echoes of some black-and-white images in our archives.

Fifty years ago, in June 1974, that space was blank until a single letter was placed atop what was then a new building.

It was a 19-foot high “E” — the final letter in what would spell out “INDEPENDENT LIFE.”

More than tallest building in Florida

To understand what a big deal this was in Jacksonville, start by going back about 2½ years to Dec. 16, 1971, and the speech that Jacob F. Bryan III, president and chairman of the board of Independent Life, gave to the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100.

“At last I can unbutton my lips …” he began.

Bryan explained that as Independent Life turned 50, it was growing so rapidly that it not only had filled all 18 stories of the building it built on W. Duval Street in 1955, it had to find space elsewhere.

“For some years we had been accumulating land on the block bordered by Water and Bay streets and Main and Laura streets,” he said. “The question was: Should we use this block for our new building? Or should we locate our new building elsewhere, perhaps in one of the suburbs of Jacksonville?”

On the face of it, he said, downtown Jacksonville didn’t look like a good location.

“You live in Jacksonville,” he told those gathered. “You don’t have to be told that the downtown area isn’t what it used to be. The decline of the center city is a phenomenon that is found in many American cities….. Some of these cities have taken positive steps to halt the decline by creating new city centers, attractive places that give people new reasons to come downtown. Jacksonville has been developing plans for such a city center.”

He said Independent Life considered building a sprawling building elsewhere. Something more horizontal than vertical. The land would be less expensive. But it also would require a lot of it. And the nature of such a building would make communication within it more difficult.

“A walk from one department to another and back might turn into a long, long hike,” he said, saying in a high-rise that could be accomplished in seconds.

He said downtown Jacksonville had drawbacks. Restaurants were scarce. Parking was inadequate. And it wasn’t pedestrian-friendly. But to a degree, that was exactly why they had decided to build downtown. To change it.

“This investment will not only give Independent Life a new building, it will give Jacksonville a great new symbol of our city’s aspirations, and will provide the beginnings of a rich, dramatic, and exciting downtown environment,” he said.

There was a presentation, with color slides, about what they planned to build.

At the time, Jacksonville could still boast the tallest office building in the state, the 28-story Gulf Life Building on the Southbank. But that was about to change. When the first National Bank Building in Tampa was completed, it would be 35 stories and 464 feet high. And in Miami, a 465-foot tall building was being built. And then there was the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Kennedy, just one story but the state’s tallest structure at 525 feet.

All of this led to the drum-roll moment: “Ladies and gentlemen, Independent Square will be 37 stories and 535 feet high.”

It would have a pyramid-shaped base, with more than 200,000 square feet of reflective glass, with the insulating power of 8 inches of brick. From outside, the building would have a chameleon-like quality, taking on every color and hue of Jacksonville. From inside, it would have floor-to-ceiling views of the city. And at the base, there would be a towering atrium that would be called “the largest greenhouse in the world.”

The building would have 3,000 people doing much more than working in its 1 million square feet of space. With shops and restaurants and more, it would almost be “a city under one roof.” And it would change the rest of the city.

The skyscraper of the future

Earlier this year, knowing this would be the 50th anniversary for the Independent Life building, I went to the Main Library and looked at the Times-Union and Jacksonville Journal archives. If you think we’ve written a lot about the “Stadium of the Future,” you should see how much coverage there was of the skyscraper viewed as the future of the city.

Hundreds of stories and photos appeared in the Times-Union and Jacksonville Journal as the Independent Life building was being built, when it was finished in 1974 and when it opened in 1975.

Just a sample:

∎ Mayor Hans Tanzler reacted to the plans for what was initially called Independent Square by saying: “It’s like a new city rising out of the ashes of an old and dying city.”

∎ There were stories and photos about seemingly every part of the process and the building: the $34,679 check being delivered for the building permit; the demolition of the five-story West Building, one of the first “skyscrapers” erected after the Great Fire; the “big pour” of more than 10,000 tons of concrete; the pomp surrounding a pile driver and the first of 2,100 pilings; the 7 acres of glass walls designed for the city’s “worst weather”; the sprinkler system that would prevent the kind of high-rise tragedy seen in in that period in Atlanta and New Orleans; the 15 high-speed elevators transporting people to the top of the tower in 30 seconds; the club with a view.

∎ As the building was going up, Times-Union writer Bill Foley wrote a piece with the headline, “Downtown’s Not Dead, It’s Just Being Reborn.”

“It’s easy to imagine tumbleweed rolling across the all but empty streets,” he wrote. “Yet the city, the downtown, isn’t only on the verge of its greatest development. It’s committed to it.”

He described some of the details in the “Plan for Downtown Jacksonville,” a 1971 consultant report that led to the Downtown Development Authority, and pointed to Independent Square as a key to what was ahead.

∎ The financing: A business story said that the most astounding fact about Independent Square wasn’t that it would become Florida’s tallest building with the state’s fastest elevators, biggest air-conditioning system and largest people capacity.

It was that it was being paid for in cash — $40 million.

The original price tag was $38 million. That grew to about $40 million, paid for in cash by Independent Life. Adjusted for inflation, that’s approximately $254 million in today’s dollars.

∎ A political message: In the spring of 1973, with Watergate dominating the headlines, construction workers painted a message on one of the steel girders: “We support Pres Nixon.”

A photo of this went viral the old-fashioned way, before the Internet, appearing in newspapers all over the country. And in August, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of the president, came to Jacksonville. A Times-Union story — with the headline “Julie Charms Hard Hats at Square” — said she spoke to nearly 1,000 construction workers, dignitaries and others at the building site.

Eisenhower told those gathered that when someone had sent her a clipping of the photo, she had placed it on her father’s pillow at the White House.

“I know what a big boost that gave him,” she said. “And it gave me an even bigger boost.”

∎ The final beam

On Sept. 26, 1973, the papers had multiple stories about Independent’s “topping out.”

A gleaming white beam — signed by Independent Life employees — was adorned with an American flag, a small limb from the Treaty Oak and a 2-foot doll dressed as a construction worker. As it was lifted 37 stories, the Terry Parker High band played the “Star Spangled Banner,” balloons were released and fireworks set off.

∎ When it was finished, how big was the Independent Life Building? So big that a citizen made a replica of it out of pennies.

The Oct. 24, 1974 editions of the Times-Union included a photo of Tennille A. Sutton, a 55-year-old paper company employee, standing next to a 4-foot high replica made out of about 60,000 pennies —  $600 worth.

∎ On a Monday morning the following year — July 21, 1975 — 950 Independent Life employees entered their new offices on 13 floors of the building. They were greeted by Johnny Jelinek’s Dixieland Band playing, “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here.”

'This was our Super Bowl'

Larry Denny pulls out a model of the building and sets it on top of some architectural drawings spread out on a table in his Fruit Cove home.

His model isn’t a replica made of pennies. It was meticulously made — 1:50 scale — using the actual glass that would go into the building. It’s one of the models that, long before there was an actual building, was used to envision and show what they were working on at KBJ Architects.

“We had several schemes,” he said. “We had one that was gold, but it wouldn't have reflected the sky properly. So we ended up with the silver scheme.”

Denny, 78, started working for KBJ not long after graduating from high school and going into the military. He says he never went to college — he was too busy working on this project — and he got his degree from “the University of KBJ.”

More: Meet the two men who built much of downtown Jacksonville, in miniature

He spent 35 years there, rising to senior vice president. But some of his fondest memories are from when he was in his 20s, in charge of model building.

He worked on the 13th floor of the Coastline building and had a view of the Independent Life building site. When Auchter Company was building it, and everyone was getting excited about seeing what it would look like, Denny already knew. He made the model.

“I had seen this building every day for 2½ years,” he said with a laugh. “This was my life. I’d wake up thinking about Independent Life. I’d go to bed at night thinking about Independent Life.”

He was young enough to figure there’d be another project like that one. There never was. He worked on plenty of other buildings, many that he’s quite proud of. But he says: “This was our Super Bowl, our World Series … I was just lucky. I was in the right spot at the right time.”

As he flipped through the architectural drawings on the table in his house, he noted some of the things that fell by the wayside — for instance, there were plans for pedestrian bridges and walkways leading into the building — but also something that remains, at least for now: the unobstructed view.

He says that when the 37-story building was built, the city promised no other high-rise would go up between it and the river. It was one thing when the two-story Jacksonville Landing opened in 1987. But it was another when, amidst the plans for what to do with that space now, a 44-story high-rise was proposed.

“That was not supposed to happen,” he said.

What has happened in the last 50 years — changes in technology, how we work and, particularly after the pandemic, where we work — affected office buildings everywhere. The Independent Life building didn’t prove to be as much a catalyst as hoped. Some of the 1974 stories have echoes today, particularly ones about renderings and downtown’s potential.

But the riverfront does look dramatically different than before 1974 — photos from before construction show a riverfront full of pavement and parked cars — and the building now known as 1 Independent Square remains one of the most recognizable structures in Jacksonville.

It held the title of tallest building in Florida for about seven years, until a 39-story building was built in Tampa. There now are dozens of taller buildings in the state — including the 42-story, 617-foot Bank of America Tower, known as Barnett Center when it was completed in 1990.

Denny has a painting in his home, the Independent Life building without that black tower behind it.

“I call that Darth Vader,” he said. “You know there are four of them in the United States? Different heights.”

He says that the Independent Life building was one-of-a-kind — and remains the star of the Jacksonville skyline.

“I've seen a lot of great buildings,” he said. “This holds its own because of its simplicity.”

It hasn’t been officially known as the Independent Life building in decades. The company's prior home on W. Duval Street kept that name, but after Independent Life was acquired by American General Life in 1996, the building on Independent Drive has gone through a series of naming rights and signage changes: AccuStaff, Modis, Wells Fargo.

But to some — particularly those who remember how big a deal it was 50 years ago — the name never changed.

“It was always Independent Life to me,” Denny said. “It’ll never be anything but Independent.”

mwoods@jacksonville.com

(904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Fifty years later, Independent Square still star of Jacksonville skyline