It’s the era of the Tallahassee high-rise.
The 23-story Plaza Tower nears completion on Kleman Plaza, where the 11-story Tallahassee Center opened in 2006. That’s also the year the 14-story Tennyson opened on Monroe Street.
Throw in an earlier wave of high-rise buildings – Holiday Inn (12 stories), Doubletree Hotel (16 stories), Highpoint Center (16 stories), Department of Education (19 stories) and new Capitol (22 stories) – and downtown Tallahassee is developing a skyline.
Yet at its heart remains the original: the Exchange Building, Tallahassee’s first skyscraper. All six stories of it, depending on how you count.
“I don’t know that there’s a better property downtown,” said Pat Roberts, president of the Florida Association of Broadcasters, sitting in his second-floor corner office. “Much of the building still has the character of when it was built.”
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Exchange Building, on the southeast corner of Monroe Street and College Avenue. Built in late 1927, it formally opened March 3, 1928. Some Tallahasseeans know it as the Midyette-Moor Building, for the insurance company that owned and occupied it from 1935 to 1973.