FLORIDA SUPREME COURT | 1948-2023
FLORIDA LEGAL HISTORY
Old House Moves to a New Home at FSU Making way for the new Florida Supreme Court Building in the 1940s, the McIntosh home was moved to serve as the FSU presidents’ residence
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By Patsy Palmer hen the Florida Supreme Court began construction of its current building in 1948, it was moving into a leafy residential area surrounding the state Capitol. The neighborhood had been home to numerous state officials and employees, including long-time Chief Justice James B. Whitfield (1860-1948) and his brother, Supreme Court Clerk George Talbot Whitfield (18731939). The site chosen for the new court building had once belonged to William M. McIntosh, Jr. (1854-1938), who served as chief clerk for the Florida Comptroller for 42 years and was active in Tallahassee civic life. One of four founding owners of the town’s first waterworks, he also spent one term as Tallahassee mayor in 1907. In 1895, the same year he helped found the waterworks, McIntosh built an airy, two-story wooden folk-Victorian house at the corner of Duval and St. Augustine Streets. The structure had a wide center hall with a winding staircase, windows that swept nearly floor to ceiling, and a lacy two-story front porch. Half a century later, Tallahassee was beginning a post-war boom that would steadily expand the Capitol Complex and eventually eliminate all the nearby houses. The Court’s plan to build on the McIntosh site coincided with the transformation of Florida State College for Women (FSCW) into the larger, coeducational Florida State University (FSU). Doak S. Campbell, who had been FSCW president since 1941 and would lead FSU until 1957, believed the school’s expansion merited an official president’s house which could be a center for University entertaining as well as a residence.
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HISTORICAL REVIEW
WINTER 2023
