Panorama of Downtown Miami in 1926
Panorama of Downtown Miami in 1926
Panoramic view of downtown Miami from the corner of East First Avenue and Flagler Street looking southeast in 1926.
The cover image is a panorama view of part of Miami’s ever evolving skyline during the building boom decade of the 1920s. This photo was taken from the northwest corner of East First Avenue and Flagler Street and captures some of the buildings that were the product of the boom.
The structure in the foreground on the left is the First National Bank building at 101 East Flagler Street. The tall building on the right in the photograph is the Miami Bank & Trust building at 121 SE First Street, and the building to its left is the Huntington building at 168 SE First Street. The one thing each of these buildings has in common is that they are still standing and all three have local historic designation protection.
First National Bank
The First National Bank building seen in the photograph was the second structure on the northeast corner of East First Avenue and Flagler Street. The first building was a small, single-story structure constructed in 1902, shortly after the bank was chartered. By 1920, the decade that ushered in the great building boom in downtown Miami, the quaint one-story building was too small for the amount of business being conducted by the bank.
In 1922, First National Bank moved out of their original location, razed the one-story structure, and replaced it with the 15-story building that still stands today on the original location of the bank at 101 East Flagler Street. The new building opened on November 14, 1922.
By the mid-1950s, First National Bank needed a building that provided parking for their customers. They constructed an edifice along Biscayne Boulevard that became the first building with onsite parking available in the building, and moved into it in 1958. The edifice at 101 East Flagler continued to operate as an office building until 2008 when it was reconfigured into the First Flagler Condominium building.
Miami Bank & Trust (Langford)
Designed by Hampton & Ehmann and constructed in 1925, the Miami Bank & Trust building opened in the spring of 1926. A few months after it opened, in June of 1926, the bank was acquired by City National Bank & Trust, which was owned by J.C. Penney. A little more than a year after the stock market crash of 1929, in December of 1930, City National closed its doors and went into receivership. A year later, Florida National Bank, owned by Alfred I. Dupont, acquired some of the assets of City National including the building at 121 SE First Street.
When Florida National Bank moved into the new Alfried I Dupont building on Flagler Street in 1937, the edifice on SE First Street was left without a signature tenant until George Langford, a general contractor and property manager, acquired the building in 1949. The building was historically designated in November of 1988, and has since been reconfigured as a hostelry operating as the Langford Hotel since 2016.
Huntington Building
Designed by Louis Kamper of Detroit, who was the primary architect, and Pfeiffer & O’Reilly as the associate architects, the Huntington Building was the brainchild of Frederic Rand. He was an attorney turned developer during the building boom and had a vision of configuring East Second Avenue to be reminiscent of New York’s Fifth Avenue. The Huntington Building sits on the corner of SE Second Avenue and SE First Street and was the first of a number of structures to be erected by Rand on Second Avenue. The Huntington was constructed on a corner lot that hosted his residence prior to being redeveloped for the 13-story building.
While Frederic Rand’s ambitions were lofty, he became a victim of the downturn due to the building bust that culminated in the winter of 1926. While the Huntington building was completed prior to the end of the boom, several other projects along East Second Avenue were in various stages of completion when he ran out of money and credit. The Huntington building was historically designated in October of 1983, and operates today as office condominiums.
Related Content:
