Name/Title
Cohen Bros Department Store in the St. James Building, 1910s.Entry/Object ID
2003.001.011Description
Duval Street between Laura and Hogan
(117 W Duval Street)
Architects: H.J. Klutho
Cohen Bros Department Store in the St. James Building (notice construction in front of windows).
Completed on October 21, 1912, it was the largest building in Jacksonville and the ninth-largest department store in Florida. It was on the original site of the St. James Hotel, one of Jacksonville's grandest hotels destroyed by the Great Fire of 1901. Jacob and Morris Cohen purchased this property in 1910, with the stipulation that they could not build a hotel there. In March 1910, they commissioned Klutho to design a department store. Klutho submitted three rather conventional two-story designs followed by a dramatic four-story design covering the entire city block, as well as his innovative concept of a mixed-use design: small privately run shops on the ground floor and a massive department store at the center of the first story and all of the second story; and two floors of rentable office space above the store.
The building was considered Klutho's Prairie School masterpiece, combining design principles of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan into his own creation. It is decorated with terracotta Sullivanesque ornamentation, depicting seashell motifs and plant likeness native to this area. Klutho served as architect and construction manager for this project and he completed the building in less than eighteen months.
The interior of the building contained a huge octagonal glass dome, seventy-five feet in diameter and supported by eight colossal heroic statues. Ornate open-cage elevators carried patrons from the lower level to the upper three stories. In May 1927, the domed canopy was removed to create more office space and Klutho removed his offices from the building in disgust.
Another remodeling occurred in 1959 when the ground-floor exterior was "modernized" and the beautiful suspended glass canopies that hung over the main entrances were removed.
The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and was purchased by the City of Jacksonville in 1993 during a major funding program called "The Renaissance Plan". Part of this plan included purchasing, restoring and retrofitting of the St. James for a new city hall which would place the consolidated government at the very heart of the City of Jacksonville?s downtown urban area.Collection
Chapin Photographic CollectionLexicon
Nomenclature 4.0
Nomenclature Secondary Object Term
Print, PhotographicNomenclature Primary Object Term
PhotographNomenclature Sub-Class
Graphic DocumentsNomenclature Class
Documentary ObjectsNomenclature Category
Category 08: Communication Objects