Bank of America tower

The Bank of America Tower is a 617 ft (188 m) skyscraper in downtown Jacksonville, Florida, United States. It is the tallest building in Jacksonville, and the ninth-tallest in the state of Florida (the tallest eight all being in Miami). It was built as the headquarters of Barnett Bank and originally named Barnett Center, but the name was changed in 1997 when Barnett was acquired by NationsBank, which soon merged with BankAmerica. Completed in 1990, the building is the tallest building between Atlanta and Miami. The 42-floor structure was designed by German-American architect Helmut Jahn, and is constructed of reinforced concrete.

Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968. The consolidation gave Jacksonville its great size and placed most of its metropolitan population within the city limits; with a population of 821,784, it is the most populous city proper in Florida and the Southeast, and the eleventh most populous in the United States. Jacksonville is the principal city in the Greater Jacksonville Metropolitan Area, with a population of 1,345,596 in 2010.

Jacksonville is in the First Coast region of northeast Florida and is centered on the banks of the St. Johns River, about 25 miles (40 km) south of the Georgia state line and about 340 miles (547 km) north of Miami. The Jacksonville Beaches communities are along the adjacent Atlantic coast. The area was originally inhabited by the Timucua people, and in 1564 was the site of the French colony of Fort Caroline, one of the earliest European settlements in what is now the continental United States. Under British rule, settlement grew at the narrow point in the river where cattle crossed, known as Wacca Pilatka to the Seminole and Cowford to the British. A platted town was established there in 1822, a year after the United States acquired the colony of Florida from Spain; it was named after Andrew Jackson, the first military governor of the Florida Territory and seventh President of the United States.