A two-story brick edifice that has faced West Union Street for 107 years came tumbling down Wednesday morning, demolished by the city after a huge fire gutted the former funeral home late Saturday.
Jacksonville s inspection division took only a day to approve an emergency demolition order for the abandoned Moulton & Kyle Funeral Home downtown, then crews from J. B. Coxwell Contracting began pulling the charred brick walls down early Wednesday.
The fire in the building near North Laura Street was reported about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, police said. The blaze required 110 firefighters to extinguish it as it gutted the interior of the building, shuttered in 2013, then the roof and second story collapsed.
02:19 PM EST Share Contractor J.B. Coxwell Contracting Inc. applied to the city to raze the historic building that burned in a weekend fire.
Contractor J.B. Coxwell Contracting Inc. applied to the city Jan. 12 for a permit to demolish the fire-destroyed historic Moulton and Kyle Funeral Home at 17 W. Union St. Downtown.
Jacksonville-based Coxwell requested the permit for emergency demolition of the two-story, 9,272-square-foot unused structure, which was built in 1914.
Robert J. Peeples Jr. owns the building. He is director of Peeples Funeral Services Inc. He bought the Moulton and Kyle property in 1992, property records show.
Jacksonville Daily Record news partner News4Jax.com reported the state fire marshal is investigating the fire that destroyed the 107-year-old building Jan. 9. It reported more than 140 firefighters and several engines battled the blaze into the night.
Wayne Wood was just 5 or so when he first confronted Charles Adrian Pillars masterpiece of a sculpture, looming over him at Memorial Park on the Jacksonville riverfront.
Cast in bronze, designed to honor those from Florida who died in the horror of World War I, the sculpture portrays a nude, winged male figure. He s poised on one foot atop a stylized globe, holding an olive branch out to the sky. Below him rise the shapes of partial human figures, women and children, as if struggling to come out of the chaos of the world.
It s called Life.
Visiting his grandmother in Riverside, up from his home in Belle Glade, the young Wood was terrified by the size and scope of the sculpture. He might even have cried.