A building that’s stood for nearly a century in the heart of downtown Tallahassee will soon be transformed.
Located at 108 S. Monroe Street, the two-story building is a touchstone to the past and has had many lives: a hardware shop, the Ritz Theatre, the Eleanor retail store and, for the last several decades, office space. Yet, the building’s true age is a mystery.
“It could go to the ’20s,” said Ryan Sheplak, creative director at Architects Lewis + Whitlock in Tallahassee, the firm leading the new design work. “It’s kind of hard to tell; there’s not a lot of drawings or existing documentation.”
It’s home to the Floridian Partners, a lobbying and consulting firm who represents a range of clients, including Uber and the Florida Insurance Council.
As construction continues, Sheplak said there are clues to just how old the building may be. Pencil sketches on the walls have dates scribbled from the 1930s. Some of the character will remain in the public spaces.
“The plan right now is to expose a lot of the old brick walls that were kind of part of the theater. So that will be on the interior of some of the offices, especially the second floor,” Sheplak said. “There was a lot of damage to a lot of the old brick walls, which is really unfortunate because you can only expose so much.”