The Title & Trust Company of Florida Building is a historic site in Jacksonville, Florida. It is located at 200 East Forsyth Street. On February 23, 1990, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
From the Florida Division of Historical Resources:
Jacksonville TITLE AND TRUST COMPANY (Florida Building). 200 E. Forsyth St. 1929. Classical Revival. Marsh and Saxelbye, architects. 2 stories. Steel frame encased in concrete. Brick and limestone detail on outside. Main facade has entrance with engaged columns and Doric pilasters. Building played a critical role in the development of Jacksonville following the Great Fire of 1901. Private. N.R. 1990.
This historic building is now used as commercial office space.
What FDHR left out is that the company was originally founded in 1887 when local residents formed a predecessor firm, Florida Abstract and Title Security Co. Jacksonville’s former city treasurer James Spratt bought that company and during the process he had duplicate copies of most of the county’s land ownership records made.
The Great Fire destroyed the county courthouse and all it’s records. As the blaze neared his building Spratt and his employees loaded the records onto a boat and sailed across the river, safe from the fire. Afterward he moved his company to its new location at 200 East Forsyth Street, a building equipped with fireproof steel vaults.
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The building today
Portions of this article were originally published in the Riverside Review, January1986.