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One River Plaza History
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Highlights
1925 >>Construction on the First National Bank Building begins
1926 >>Construction on the project is completed & the building opens in the summer
1927 >>The failing First National Bank merges with Fort Lauderdale Bank & Trust Company
1931 >>Mr. William Sweet takes control of the building, and it becomes widely known as "The Sweet Building" all around Fort Lauderdale
1967 >>The building's name is changed to The Las Olas Building by the owner at the time
1979 >>The building is aquired by its present owner, One River Plaza Company
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The Story of One River Plaza
>> In 1915 Dixie Highway was completed through Fort Lauderdale following
the same Andrews Avenue route of a 1906 rock road developed by Dade County.
This road was constructed to link what is now Dade, Broward and Palm Beach
counties. Although described by one observer as "rocky, rough, full of
pothol es ,and narrow," it was along this street that the most dramatic
downtown boom time development took place.
>> By the middle of the 1920's Fort Lauderdale's burgeoning population
soared to an estimated 16,000 people, eight times the number of residents
counted in the 1920 Federal Census. New residential developments were
springing up in former marsh and pine lands. So many people were arriving
that a tent city was set up in Victoria Park. Residents of tourist camps
on the south side of the New River at Andrews Avenue became known as "tin-can
tourists" for their diets, which consisted primarily of canned food.
>>In 1925 the First National Bank decided to build its own building to
accomodate its growing business. A site was purchased for $24,000 and
construction began on Fort Lauderdale's first skyscraper, a nine story
building, located at 305 South Andrews Avenue. Built at a cost of $487,000,
the building opened the next summer.
>> Although construction in Fort Lauderdale reached its apogee in 1926,
over speculation in land was causing a weakening in the boom which came to a
screeching halt a few months after the skyscraper opened. On September 18,
1926 a devastating hurricane swept through southeast Florida killing fifteen
people and injuring approximately five hundred in Fort Lauderdale alone.
Properties throughout the city sustained considerable damage. 'l'he top of the
city's water tower located about a block north of the First National Bank
Building blew off and the Andrews Avenue Bridge lost most of its guard
railings, its traffic control systems and the control house. The First
National Bank Building was reported to have 19" of water
on the first floor but otherwise, its quality construction enabled it to come
through the storm relatively unscathed.
>> Late the next year the floundering First National Bank merged with the
Fort Lauderdale Bank and Trust Company located across the street where the
Museum of Art is located today. In the early 1930s a group of men including
John Lochrie, Charles N. McCune and William L. Sweet, Jr. , took over the
building. When a second or third mortgage became due in 1931, Mr. Sweet
picked it up and took control as the others were no longer interested in the
project. Although Mr. Sweet, a winter visitor from New York, objected to the
building being known as the Sweet Building because of a joking connotation
that the building was a place where sweets were sold, the name was adopted
and became known to everyone in F'ort Lauderdale. The name remained until a
subsequent building owner changed the name in 1967 to the Las Olas Building.
>> Many of Fort Lauderdale's most prominent names occupied offices in the
Sweet Building and at one time most of the doctors, dentists and lawyers were
located in the building. In the 1930s the Arcade Billiard Parlor, Clip and
Curl Shop, Brayton-Cole Co. (pharmacy), Miami Daily News, the Florida Inland
Navigation District, Federal Savings and Loan Association and the Bond and
Tax Adjustment Bureau, Inc. (tax service) were located in the building as
well as names linked with the history of Fort Lauderdale: realtor Frank
Croissant, a flamboyant salesman for the developers of Croissant Park;
lawyers C. E. Farrington, George w. English, Sr. and Jr., G. H. Martin,
Julian Ross, and the firm of Rogers, Morris and Griffis. Osteopathic
physician David R. Stull was the first person to occupy the building and did,
so until his retirement in 1968. N. B. Cheaney, George English and Charles
Lindfors started Broward Federal Savings and Loan in 1933 in a suite of rooms
occupied by Cheaney's Broward Abstract Company. The name was later changed
to First Federal Savings and Loan Association and today is Glenfederal
Savings and Loan. In 1937 George English started a new bank in the Sweet
Building in a space previously occupied by a small restaurant, the Orange
Blossom. Later on when his partner, Don Barnett of Jacksonville sold his
interest, the bank was chartered as the First National Bank of Fort
Lauderdale later known as the Landmark National Bank.
>> The original plans for the skyscraper were for a building covering a
much larger area but were scaled down on the west side to include only the
first and mezzanine floors even though the foundations reportedly could
sustain a twenty story building. The building has been altered through the
years with a remodeling of the arcade in 1947, once the main architectural
focal point; installation of air conditioning in 1948; window remodeling in
1958; elevator replacement with two high-speed elevators and lobby remodeling
in 1963; building refacement in 1966; replacement of the wood windows with
aluminum ones in 1967 and addition of the south wall stairtower and firewalls
in 1979.
>> In 1979 the building was acquired by its present owner, One River Plaza
Co. , who subsequently acquired the one and a half story building to the north
which faces Wall Street. The records are not clear as to when this building
was constructed. A building of the same configuration is on the 1912, 1914,
1918 and 1924 Sanborn Insurance Maps. By its yellow color, the building is
indicated to be of wood construction and underwent some slight interior
configuration changes in its retail shops between 1918 and 1928. However,
the 1928 Sanborn lnsurance Map colors the building blue which indicates the
building is of brick construction. Photographs taken after the Brickell Avenue
fire of 1912 show a building on the site, but whether this is the building of
today or one built between 1924-28 can not be determined from records available.
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