Your stop is the Jessie Ball duPont Center, a nonprofit complex in downtown Jacksonville that once housed the city’s main public library. This building served as the Haydon Burns Library from 1965 until 2005, when it was replaced by the current facility. The library was named for W. Haydon Burns, who served as Mayor of Jacksonville for fifteen years and later as Governor of Florida for two years.
When it was built in 1965 at a cost of $3.7 million, the 126,000-square-foot, three-story building was considered state of the art. Local architect Taylor Hardwick—who had been designing buildings across Jacksonville since the mid-1950s, from the Skinner Dairy chain to Friendship Fountain and Park—spent five years on the design, with contributions from nationally known library consultant John Hall Jacobs. The Haydon Burns Library itself had replaced the earlier Jacksonville Free Public Library, a Carnegie Library built in 1905 and designed by Henry John Klutho of New York City.
On April 18, 2012, the AIA’s Florida Chapter honored the building on its list of Florida Architecture: 100 Years. 100 Places. The three stories and the block around it still carry the shape of the old library beside you.