Miami's Depression-defying skyscraper now hosts its grandest parties. The Alfred I. duPont Building at 169 East Flagler Street, completed in 1939 for 2.5 million dollars, was the first skyscraper raised in Miami after the 1926 bust and the Dade County Courthouse of 1928 - a 17-story Modern tower with Art Deco embellishments by Jacksonville architects Marsh and Saxelbye, built as headquarters for the Florida National Bank that financier Alfred I. duPont had organised in 1931, and dedicated to his memory on the site of the old Halcyon Hotel. The interiors made it a showcase: the bank lobby placed innovatively on the second floor behind street-level retail, brass elevator doors, cypress ceilings painted with Florida regionalism motifs - Seminole scenes among them - and the great vaults that survive as conversation pieces. During the Second World War the Navy commissioned the tower as fleet headquarters of the 7th Naval District, mapping the Gulf Sea Frontier across whole floors; sailors nicknamed it the USS Neversink. The National Register of Historic Places listed the building in January 1989. Today the duPont trades as one of downtown Miami's signature event venues: weddings, galas, corporate functions, performances, fashion shoots and music videos play out under the painted ceilings, with the banking hall's scale and the vault doors providing the drama modern ballrooms cannot fake. The Flagler Street location puts the tower at the walkable heart of the old downtown, minutes from Bayfront Park and the Metromover loop. Architecture buffs rate the duPont among Florida's finest Depression Moderne interiors: the regionalism movement's insistence on local subject matter filled the banking floors with Florida flora, wildlife and history rendered in painted cypress and wrought metal, executed by artisans whose work survives essentially intact because the building never suffered a gut renovation. That authenticity - not reproduction, the original 1939 fabric - is what event planners are actually renting, and why film and fashion productions keep the tower in steady rotation.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 169 East Flagler Street, Miami, United States, 33131

Website: https://thedupontbuilding.com

Opening Date: 01/01/1939