Paco's golden age of gainful employment

I use the expression "golden age" very loosely, because, at the time, I had not come anywhere near my greatest earning power, most of my practical and formal business education was still in front of me, and some of the people I had to interact with provided me with first-hand observations of the way in which sociopaths mainstream themselves into the corporate environment.

But in terms primarily of the physical working environment - the offices, the buildings, the location - the seven years I spent working for Florida National Bank were incomparable. After three and a half years employed as a state bank examiner, I followed one of my supervisors to Florida National Bank. She headed up the southern region of the loan review department, and there were initially three of us: the boss lady, two worker bees (including me) and a secretary. Our offices were located on the very private third floor of the Alfred I. Dupont building, a skyscraper filled with art deco ornamentation completed in 1939 and located in the heart of downtown Miami. The boss lady's office looked like something an ambassador would have been highly pleased with: marble walls and floors, expensive oriental rugs, art deco floor lamps, heavy yet beautifully ornate wooden furniture, and a private bathroom with shower. The senior worker bee had a smaller, but similarly ornate office and I...well, my office was the original Florida National Bank of Miami boardroom. My "desk" was a massive table of polished granite with stout and highly decorative bronze legs; I had heard that the table was so large, that it had to be lifted by crane and placed in the room before the exterior walls were constructed. The rooms had windows that could be opened to let in fresh air and the sounds of the very active street below. The windows came in quite handy for observing the attempted storming of the Haitian consulate in 1986, about the time Baby Doc Duvalier was forced to flee Haiti (there is a sizeable Haitian community in Miami, and most of it, at the time, consisted of refugees from the oppression of the Duvalier family). The streets near the building were filled with shops and wonderful little restaurants, most of them providing Cuban cuisine, but also Argentine steakhouses, one or two French bakeries, and a handful of fast-food joints.

Here is a photo of the outside of the Dupont Building; I believe its main use now is for wedding events, which are held in the vast mezzanine area. Oddly, there are very few photos of the interior of the building that are not connected with its venue for weddings and other events. A shame, really, because it was (and probably still is) a virtual museum of art deco ornamentation. It was rumored that there was a private apartment at the very top of the building that had been used by the former chairman, but I never had a chance to see it (if, indeed, it really existed).

After about three years, a decision was made to move us out of the Dupont Building. The chief of our statewide unit was thinking of putting us in Ft. Lauderdale, which would have been a somewhat lengthy daily trip, for me. But I suddenly had a great idea (one not much appreciated by my coworkers, who lived in Broward County). Years before, when I was finishing up my undergraduate studies at the University of Miami, I had had numerous opportunities for going into downtown Coral Gables (mostly for cigars and Cuban food and the well-stocked used-book shops). I recalled seeing a gorgeous two-story building that looked like the presidential palace of some tropical South American country; it was, in fact, the Coral Gables branch of Florida National Bank. I used to say to myself, "I sure would like to work there someday". Well, now was my chance to make my dream come true. I casually dropped the idea of moving our unit to the Coral Gables office into a conversation with the Big Chief. He furrowed his brow, looked speculatively at the ceiling, and told me he'd think about it. Within a few days, to my inexpressible delight (and to the consternation of my fellows and immediate supervisor), we got official notification that we'd be shifting to the Coral Gables branch.

Our offices were on the second floor, and they were nothing special; just cheap office space thrown together at some point in the not too distant past, with no thought of creating consistency with the style of the rest of the building (the branch operation downstairs was extraordinarily elegant, with marble floors and, like our previous home, was filled with art deco bronze work). But what a neighborhood! The building was located on Miracle Mile, the main drag in Coral Gables, and there were all kinds of shops and restaurants and even a cigar store (a dozen years later, I was astonished to find the owner of the Coral Gables cigar store running a similar shop in Roanoke, Virginia) Less than a hundred feet from the front door was a tiny Cuban restaurant, with the traditional little windowed cubicle open to the sidewalk for the express purpose of selling small shots of the strong and sweet café cubano to passersby. Across the street was what surely must have been one of the last Woolworth's department stores still in operation; the lunch counter served the most delicious burgers and fries! And a few blocks away stood the used bookstore where, as a collector of 18th century English literature, I found my Holy Grail: the collected works of Samuel Johnson.

Down the street from the bank (in the general direction of the aforementioned bookstore) was an excellent restaurant, now sadly out of business, called Cervantes. The cuisine was Spanish, and they served a mouthwatering sausage dish with rice (and bread with a strange-looking, but tasty, orange butter - at least, it tasted like butter; I suppose it might have been some kind of cheese). The service was outstanding, and whenever I went in with my guests, the maître d' would be sure to pull out a chair specifically for my hat. Once, the waiter overcharged us by something like a dollar, and when I asked to have the bill corrected, practically the entire staff buzzed around us with the most abject apologies, and the owner offered each of us a glass of the most marvelous hazelnut liqueur. 

Following are two pictures of the Florida National Bank branch in Coral Gables. The first appears to have been taken in the late 1950s, but the building still looked exactly like that when we took up residence. The second was taken, I believe, sometime after we moved out and shows the baroque architecture at the main entrance. 

After a couple of years in this beautiful setting, we were moved a final time, to a deadly dull new operations center not too far from the International Airport. Not long after, Florida National was bought by First Union, and I wound up transferring to the head office in Charlotte, and a year or two afterwards, I got out of commercial banking altogether - and not too soon, either; the industry was going through monumental changes and the new environment did not suit me at all. But the time in Miami was great, and provided me with many happy memories which I continue to cherish as I prepare to enter my dotage.