The Wallace S. Building, also known as the GTE building, located on the corner of Tampa and Twiggs Streets at 601 N Ashley Dr.
Credit: Colin Wolf

Right now in downtown Tampa, cranes are ripping down the-century old GTE building, located on the corner of Tampa and Twiggs Streets at 601 N Ashley Dr.

The property was recently purchased by “Stock Development,” and so far no details or plans for the space have been released.

Many Tampeño’s know the building as the headquarters of a large, locally-based nonprofit credit union. But for most of its history, the GTE building went by a different name: The Wallace S. Building.

Completed in 1926, the Wallace S. Building is named after Tampa Tribune publisher Wallace Stovall, and was designed by notable Tampa architect B. Clayton Bonfoey, who also designed Tampa’s City Hall, Roosevelt Elementary School in South Tampa, and Rivoli Theater (now known as the Ritz Ybor), to name a few.

After its completion, Stovall added a four-story annex along the building to house his newspaper, and in the years that followed the majority of the main building was used as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Headquarters during the Great Depression.

The Wallace S. Building, via a June 22, 1975 article in the Tampa Tribune. Credit: Tampa Tribune

The Wallace S. Building was then purchased by Crestview Realty in the 1940s, which at the time was helmed by W. Howard Frankland, the prominent businessman who now has a giant bridge spanning Tampa Bay named after him.

In the early-1970s, the Wallace Building was on its deathbed, and the structure was nearly demolished after it was bought by the locally-owned Founders Life Assurance Company, which ultimately decided it would be cheaper and more appropriate to gut and remodel the entire property.

The architect tasked with the estimated $2 million facelift was Harry “Bo” MacEwen, who was also responsible for significant structures across Tampa Bay like Stovall’s personal home, now referred to as the Stovall House, the now-demolished Walter Industries headquarters on Dale Mabry Highway, Hyde Park Village, and the Exchange Bank, which is now known as the Franklin Exchange building (where Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s offices are located).

MacEwen covered the dark red brick building with stucco and transformed the structure into a sleek, modern blue and white, 12-story skyscraper, complete with vertical window bands, new stairwells and air-condition ducts, and a parking lot and plaza where the annex once stood.

Ironically, it was MacEwen’s remodel that doomed the building, and according to WFLA, the Wallace S. Building missed historic designation because of the architect’s substantial work.

But the remodel was also a bit controversial at the time, and was met with mixed reviews. In June of 1975, shortly after the remodel was completed, S.A. Zylstra, a University of South Florida professor of humanities and city planning, complained in the Tampa Tribune that the building was essentially uninspired. “Neither inside or out is there much to look at, no interesting detail, only bright, flat, hygienic surfaces to rush past in our busy workdays,” she added.

She also complained about the lack of any pedestrian-friendly details. “As long as we have no real adequate public transportation system and as long as downtown Tampa is in large part a thoroughfare for cars and trucks, it could not but be expected that half of the building is a parking lot.”

MacEwen actually responded to the negative feedback, writing in the publication that the old building isn’t really gone, and that historians should relax because parts of it can still be found around town.

“The Wallace S. lives on – after a fashion,” said MacEwen. “Bits and pieces were salvaged and moved to Old Hyde Park. The brass elevator doors are in the Fairweather Farms plant shop. Many of the building’s exterior lights adorn various stores. And the interior paneling of the Spanish Park Restaurant came from the Wallace S. Building’s office doors.”

If you’re wondering if any of this still holds true, well, the Spanish Park Restaurant (at 3517 E Broadway) was bulldozed in 1990, and the Fairweather Farms plant shop is now the Nike store in Hyde Park. But maybe there’s some “bits and pieces” of the Wallace S. Building still left in Hyde Park Village.

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This article appears in May 14 – 20, 2026.