One Enterprise Center

The One Enterprise Center is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Clark Tribble Harris & Li, and built in 1986 in Jacksonville, FL.

One Enterprise Center is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Florida National Bank Building between 1986 and 1990.
• Wachovia Bank Tower between 1990 and 2004.
• Wells Fargo Tower between 2011 and 2018.

Its precise street address is 225 Water Street, Jacksonville, FL. You can also find it on the map here.

The building shares a glass atrium with the Marriott Downtown Hotel. The adjacent 10-story parking garage includes 1,000 spaces, of which the building is entitled to 719 through an exclusive perpetual easement. The parking facility was specifically designed to allow for future expansion by adding a contiguous structure.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2020. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Michael Development Group.

Clark Tribble Harris & Li was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

The One Enterprise Center can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The One Enterprise Center was completed in 1986. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The One Enterprise Center was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The One Enterprise Center uses a frame structure made of concrete and steel columns and beams.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a curtain wall system made predominantly of reflective glass panels that alternate with opaque light-colored panels, creating a pattern of horizontal stripes. The perfectly flat curtain wall has 8 sides due to the large beveled corners.

From a volumetric point of view the building starts with a wide podium that transitions into the tower through a pyramid-shaped roof. The tower then rises as a uniform volume until the last few floors, where there's a setback and the the final crowning in the shape of a truncated pyramid adorned by four semicircle, one on each side.